This Wondrous Hope
by KayFortnight
Summary: Sequel to I Do Recall. Every wizard in the world has a dream, detailing their next seven years of life. Of course, when people know the future, they try to change it, and Harry Potter isn't the only one who's been given a chance to change things... AU. Warnings: Character death, violence, eventual non-explicit het/slash/femslash relationships.
1. Summer Loving, Had Me A Blast

So the first chapter of This Wondrous Hope is here! Sorry to anyone who was eagerly waiting, but just like I Do Recall I wanted to finish the entire of the book before I started parsing it out, so I won't be forced to stop in the middle.

For anyone who's forgotten what happened in I Do Recall... *Takes deep breath.* Everyone woke up in 1991 essentially knowing the plot of Harry Potter and once people actually believed it, they set about to change said plot, no matter what side they were on. This resulted in Ron's death via Pettigrew, with Percy blaming himself, Lockhart and Rita signing up as Voldemort's servants, the death eaters and future death eaters getting arrested, which was a big deal since Draco was only eleven when he went to Azkaban, Sirius getting released and going to therapy, more death both at Halloween and when the teachers killed the basilisk, Lockhart starting a group of vigilantes to drive a divide in the wizarding world, this magical creatures rights campaign, and probably a couple other things I'm forgetting, but you get the gist.

I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

 _July 3, 1992._

 _Harry visited today. I had begun to fear he was only interested in my friendship during the school year, that perhaps he wasn't even truly my friend. He disabused me of that notion fairly quickly, though I'm not sure how he figured out I was so insecure. "Neville," he said frankly, "You do realize my other best friend is Hermione, right, and that she's taken to spending time with the other Ravenclaw girls? At least unless the conversation turns to plants, I can generally understand what you're talking about."_

 _Which reminds me, I need to pick out a birthday present for him. Is it weird to give another boy a potted rose? Because I've been practising the spells and potions that will make a blue rose cultivar, since traditional Muggle horticulture techniques can't do it. It's probably weird, and Harry wouldn't get it, anyway. Maybe I'll just get him a Venus Flycatcher. I remember him being… not the neatest individual when we shared a dorm._

 _I was so worried Gran wouldn't be nice to him. I mean, he's the savior of the wizarding world, right? She has to be nice to him! But still, she is Gran…_

 _She looked him up and down when he came in, and I held my breath. At least he'd gotten rid of those old baggy clothes his cousins gave him. He'd come by Floo, though, so his hair was ruffled and soot brushed across one cheek. Gran looked him up and down, pursed her lips, cast a spell to flatten his hair, and announced he'd do. I don't think I'd ever been so relieved since the time when Great Uncle Algie dropped me out the window and it turned out I wasn't a Squib._

 _I don't really have friends over often. Gran scares them._

 _Harry wasn't even insulted by the whole hair thing. He actually asked me if she'd take offense if he requested she teach him the spell- his hair had stayed down for the entire visit and he thought it might be nice to actually be able to look neat when he started dating. I hedged for a bit, but she was actually very informal when he asked. Sometimes I wonder if she'd rather have Harry as a grandson than me. Of course she would, what am I saying?_

 _Harry did teach me to fly today. I was hesitant, because while I'd been made to continue lessons until I could at least totter along in the air like an old man with a Cleansweep 1, it was a painful affair of hugging the broom for dear life and ended one time out of every ten in me either crashing into something or falling off said broom, but he was remarkably patient with me, getting me to relax a little by, rather ironically, talking about plants while we were in the air. "So I've never understood the distinction between magical plants and creatures. I mean if you look at mandrakes-"_

 _"We actually define it by whether they photosynthesis, er, get their energy from light or not. Bowtruckles look like plants, but they eat insects, so they're creatures, and technically certain blood-eating plant look-alikes are, too, whereas dryads are plants even though they're very mobile because they only need sunlight…"_

 _Anyway, it was a very important discussion, which I'm sure Harry wasn't listening to at all. So I didn't realize I'd been flying, and reasonably skillfully at that, until about an hour had passed, at which point I looked down, may have shrieked a little, and tightened my grip on my broom. Harry talked me down before I could crash into a cliff from fear, and pointed out I could fly just fine, I'd just been overthinking it._

 _I suppose that applies to my improvement in potions, too. I will never be a Quidditch star, nor potions master, but at least I can travel by broom and brew a Pepper-Up potion without killing myself._

 _And I had a lot of fun today. To be honest, I'm still waiting for the catch._

* * *

Harry thought perhaps this was the best summer he'd ever had in his life, though he didn't say that to Lupin, who still seemed half-worried that he'd question Sirius's absence. He'd only had to spend a couple weeks with the Dursleys before coming here.

He'd visited Neville and Hermione plenty over the summer. Hermione had even introduced him to all her Ravenclaw friends. Of course, Padma he already knew a little, and Sue Li acknowledged him with only a little wave before lying down on the grass to watch a butterfly. Morag simply squeaked and ran off when he introduced himself.

He had a moment of fleeting panic, wondering if she had a crush on him, because that was how Ginny used to act in the old world, before Hermione sighed and said, "She does that with everyone. Just start talking with her about potion stirring theory or something and she'll come out of her shell." Harry decided to take her word for it, and wondered if that was why he had almost no memory of her or Sue Li in the old world. Incidentally, he had no interest in potion stirring theory. He wondered why exactly anyone would.

But a little niggling feeling didn't allow him to fully relax. He hadn't received any contact from the Weasleys. With Ron gone… But he'd thought of himself as part of their family, and the part of his mind where he was again a lonely little boy in a cupboard under the stairs was sad to see that gone. He'd thought that at least Ginny would write eventually. Ginny, who had leveled a gaze of startlingly fierce anger upon him before he boarded the Hogwarts Express. Ginny, whom he hadn't seen nor heard from since.

Ginny, who he remembered as a stunning red-haired woman, fierce as any lioness, clever in a tight spot, and more stubborn than him, which was saying something. He wondered how she remembered him. He doubted it was as the child he'd admit he was now.

He wondered if they'd still fall in love this time around. So much else had changed, and he did remember being an idiot about Ginny's crush until quite some time into his schooling.

He'd simply have to talk to her when they went back to Hogwarts. They couldn't keep avoiding each other.

The doorbell to the tiny apartment he shared with Lupin in Muggle London (since only the most rundown places in Wizarding London would rent to werewolves) rang. He sprang up and hurried over to the door.

Sirius frowned and squinted at Harry. "I swear you grow every time I see you."

"You see me nearly every day," Harry pointed out, smiling. Lupin and Sirius (he was trying to get out of the habit of calling Remus by his surname, really, but it wasn't easy) hadn't really explained why he was staying with only Remus or why he wasn't staying in Grimmauld Place, but Sirius visited so often Harry didn't bring the issue up. He wondered, of course, but Sirius got really fidgety every time he talked about it. Maybe he just wanted some freedom, after last time when he could barely leave the house.

"Exactly. Sooner or later you'll be as tall as Hagrid, I swear. Did he get as tall as Hagrid, Remus?"

Remus emerged from the kitchen with a long-suffering sigh. "Of course he didn't. Use your brain for a moment, Sirius." Before Sirius could argue, he said, "He was taller."

Harry leaned back on the raggedy couch from the side of the road Remus had found to replace the expensive, but profoundly uncomfortable, one Sirius bought them in the beginning of the summer, and enjoyed the presence of his family.

He could get used to being normal.

* * *

Oliver Wood breathed in the scent of Penelope's perfume, a heady floral, tinged with their sweat and the sweet aroma of crushed grass. "You know," he murmured, rolling over in the grass languidly to face her, "I really do have to be getting to the Ministry if I'm not going to miss my Floo time." International travel was only legal through Ministry Floos so they could keep smuggling to a minimum; of course criminals didn't listen to those laws, and there was always the occasional Muggleborn leaving and entering the country by plane or boat, but Oliver saw no reason to do so himself after Penelope lectured him for an hour about the law.

She'd been so shocked to find out he was a Muggleborn. He'd stalked off in a huff until she came to him and explained she didn't mean she didn't like him because he was Muggleborn or anything like that, just that she was surprised a Muggleborn liked Quidditch so much. In her experience Muggleborns never did take a fancy to the sport, though she'd added hastily that of course that was a generalization.

He hadn't told her half his obsession with the sport came from hoping to fit in with those who grew up wizards. (His type A personality and obsession with sports before Hogwarts didn't help either, of course. He'd been told only six months before his Hogwarts letter that he might go to the Olympics for figure skating someday, before he gave it up for magic.)

Penelope sighed, bringing him back to the last moment he'd have with his girlfriend until the holidays. "Do you think they'll have a problem with you being Muggleborn there? Durmstrang is a proud school, and very… Dark."

"I don't intend to tell them, Penelope. But if they do find out, I'm sure they're not going to bully a Quidditch player bringing honor to their school." He immediately tried to push memories of Slytherin hexes out of his head. He hadn't brought all that much honor to Hogwarts, anyway, and he didn't think Durmstrang had rival houses the same way Hogwarts did. It would be fine.

"I'm happy for you." She ran nervous fingers through his hair, tousling it. "I do wish you weren't leaving, though."

"I'll be back as often as I can be," he promised, and then she silenced him with a kiss and he lost himself in that for a while, until the first drop of water landed atop his head. He glanced up at the grey sky and scowled. "Bloody rain."

Penelope stood, brushing dirt off her dress Oliver's sister had bought her for wearing so she'd fit in when visiting him in his Muggle home. "Don't swear. You knew it wasn't great weather for cloud-watching, anyway, and you need to get inside to go to the Ministry."

He stuck his tongue out at her before taking her hand and walking back to the house. "I'm going to miss you, sweetheart."

"And I you."

"Penelope?" Oliver asked, pausing underneath the eaves of the barn where the rain could not reach.

"Yes?"

He frowned out at the rain. "Will you look after him? He never did seem to recover." He didn't need to say who, he knew. Percy Weasley was, after all, indirectly the boy who'd brought them together.

Penelope laughed a little, though it had no humor in it. "Of course, Oliver. I still care." She paused, watching the rain drip off Oliver's nose. "Do you know, I'd wondered before we met again on 9 and ¾ if he'd get over his poncey attitude earlier this time around. I never thought he'd go so far in the opposite direction."

"If he asked, would you…"

She kissed him again. "Oliver? I chose you, both this time and last time. Percy's just my exboyfriend and hopefully not my ex-friend. Now, let's get you off to Bulgaria."


	2. Heroes Are Over With

A little bit of a short chapter, but it was originally part of the first chapter and if I'd kept it that way it would have run longer than my preference for my chapters (I know other people like to write longform but I think if I did that you'd be waiting even longer for updates.)

So I meant to post this yesterday, but then a friend and I started watching anime and by the time we were done it was ridiculously late. Sorry.

There's a might as well be OC character in this, but I think you'll like her, and I had to have someone take over Herbology...

I don't own Harry Potter, or Grease (which the previous chapter title is from) or Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, which this chapter title is from.

* * *

She took a seat in the chair across from the Headmaster, glancing covertly about the office. Where had the man acquired a phoenix? She'd searched many a year for the creature, even capturing a liderc along the way, but she'd only ever seen a firebird once, and it'd flown away before she got a good look. The bird of swirling flames of red and orange and yellow and towards its center, a deep cobalt blue of ultimate heat, cocked its head at her. Perhaps it sat in judgement. She thought it likely it would find her worthy. After all, fire was the substance of vengeance, and vengeance was her soul now.

The bird lowered its head and trilled, and she allowed herself a small, victorious smile.

Dumbledore leaned forward, peering over his spectacles, though at least he was not so gauche as to put his elbows on his desk. "I am dearly sorry about your son, Mrs. Zabini."  
"Yes, so I had gathered from your letter," she said tartly. Sorry didn't bring Blaise back. The boy had been a candle, weak and peaceful, but a soul that should have burned steady for many more years, not a conflagration that flared up and died away in mere moments. He'd been cheated of his due. "If I wished to discuss Blaise, I would have visited you near Halloween, not over the summer. I understand you still lack a Herbology Professor."

He frowned at her, quizzically. "I thought your interests lay more strongly in potions? Professor Snape speaks in grudging admiration of your published work, sometimes." Underneath that statement was the unspoken one that earning Professor Snape's admiration must be quite difficult.

Arabella smiled thinly. Yes, she'd seen some of his work, too. His potions tended more towards ice than fire, but she could admire a well-crafted paralytic or creeping death that took weeks to manifest and seemed an illness to the uneducated eye even if it weren't her style. "I have studied herbology, care of magical creatures, and potions all in equal depth, Headmaster, due to their intimate connections. Any good Potion's Mistress must also understand where her ingredients come from, and you are aware of my… particular difficulties that influenced my career choices and path of study." He'd been the one her mother wrote to when she never got a Hogwarts letter, after all. No one else alive knew, not now that Blaise was gone. They'd claimed she was home-taught. Well, it was true, just not in the way people thought.

He raised an eyebrow. "We have not had a Squib professor for over three hundred years, and I believe the last was a Muggle Studies professor."

"Will that be a problem for the great Albus Dumbledore, defender of the weak?" she asked, keeping her voice absolutely level. If there were any stumbling block, it would be this one. Squibs were nothing in the wizarding world. The current highest employment she knew one had achieved was the Hogwarts janitor. Word was the man was a miserable creature- she didn't envy him the task of cleaning up magical waste without the ability to Vanish the worst of it. She had enough of that, herself, when her potions went wrong.

It was possible others were hidden and trained to act like witches and wizards like herself, but she rather doubted there were any in Britain. Muggleborns and half-bloods taught their squib children in muggle schools. Among the purebloods, there were three camps that she knew of. The poor, like Argus Filch's family, took what scraps the wizarding world was willing to give them. The rich of a certain flavor of righteous like the MacDougalls sent their children to the best muggle schools money could pay for. And the rich of another flavor of righteousness deeply opposed to that of the MacDougalls, well, their squibs disappeared, suffered unfortunate accidents, and just generally didn't stick around to shame their parents.

Arabella had been awfully lucky, she reflected, that her mother had such trouble even conceiving one child.

Dumbledore met her gaze with his steely blue one, and paused for a moment. "You understand taking this job might reveal you to the world?"

Arabella raised an eyebrow. "I am confident in my ability to go unnoticed. I have found ways to mimic near every common spell with my potions, creatures, and plants. For example…" She took a wand from her pocket, one her mother, a renowned wandmaker in her heyday, had crafted for her. It was inert in her hands, of course, but it served as a display piece and even had magic about it that spells could sense when she registered it at the Ministry. She had cloaked herself quite well, really. She brushed her fingers, which had a dusting of Lux Mortalitas from the flower in her pocket, along the tip of the wand, murmured, "Lumos," and half a breath later, the wand began to glow. "Mother taught me well. My methods will disguise me."

"You still might be discovered."  
"I might," she admitted readily. "But my son is dead, and I never planned to have another heir. If I am found out, it will no longer reflect negatively on Blaise." She blew the specks of light off her fingers and her wand, and watched them float through the air like fireflies. "What's life without a little risk?"

He said, "Quite peaceful, at times. But as long as you do not enact vengeance on Gilderoy, you have the position. He could not have stopped your son's death, you know."

How had he known she wanted to do that? And how badly did he need a professor that he was willing to accept her despite her plan? She did not know, not for certain, but she promised him. Perhaps she would even keep the promise.

* * *

Nymphadora Tonks, or as she preferred to be called, just Tonks, grinned up at her new mentor, near-bouncing on her heels in excitement. Her hair didn't have the restrain of the rest of her body, as the colors of her bangs shifted out of the corner of her eye through a rainbow. His blue eye swiveled at her. Maybe that meant she'd actually managed to impress the Auror Alastor Moody? No, she'd known from the dream world that was awfully unlikely, but still…

She'd finally graduated the group sessions and reached the point where she got a mentor, and she'd lucked out enough to get Auror Moody again. How likely was that, after the world had changed so? (She'd had to call out sick after the death of Pomona Sprout made the papers. Call out sick, and get very drunk. Professor Sprout had been her head of house. Yes, she'd died a hero, but she'd still died.)

"Metamorphmagus still?" he asked. She nodded enthusiastically, though she was fairly certain it was a rhetorical question, given her changing hair and inability to lose the ability even if she wanted to. "I see. Of course, you would need a reason like that to pass, with your clumsiness. CONSTANT-"

"Vigilance," she said softly, because she'd heard it too many times in another world to jump at it any longer, and she wanted to see how vigilant the old auror was, anyway.

Auror Moody turned away, but not before she caught a smile creeping across his lips. She'd actually managed to surprise the grizzled auror, perhaps. "This job is more paperwork than action, Trainee Tonks. Are you aware?"

She grimaced. She'd never liked paperwork. But yes, she remembered the necessity of it. "I know. And since you just got back from Albania-"

"I have a decent mountain of paperwork to fill out, yes. Constant vigilance applies to paperwork, too," he lectured. "You never know what bindings as strong as any spell might be hidden in the fine print." She felt certain he was laughing at her inside, now. "You'll be helping me, of course."

"Of course," she said, with a sigh. Well, at least she was more likely to see action with Auror Moody than with any of the younger Aurors.

Shouting echoed from down the corridor outside. "You can't do this! I was doing the duty of the Light! That wizard was a Death Eater!"

Moody's expression tightened. "We will do paperwork, that is, after we deal with this." He swept out of the room, Tonks tagging close behind. "Can you produce a corporeal Patronus yet?" She nodded, and though he couldn't of seen her unless his eye could look through the back of his head like everyone said, he said, "Good. I assume this fool is going to Azkaban to await trial."

The fool in question was a handsome wizard of perhaps thirty, with the most garish blue and gold robes, and a petulant expression as he walked before a young Auror, who looked ready to strangle him herself. Auror Moody nodded to her, and she straightened as though pulled upward by puppet strings. "Auror Smith. What is this man guilty of?"

"Assault of Marian and Edward Davis, Auror Moody," she said tersely. "He's with the Life Eternal, sir."

The wizard sneered, a sneer that reminded Tonks uncomfortably of the expressions of some of the pureblood Slytherins when they saw her in school. "They were Death Eaters," he said. "They should be in Azkaban."

Auror Smith's lips twisted into a scowl, her hand hovering about her wand. "Marian and Edward Davis would already be there if they were Death Eaters. As they are not, the conclusion is obvious. They're innocent parents mourning the death of their beloved daughter, and instead of leaving them be, you accused them of allying themselves with the people who killed her, all because you wanted to play hero."

"I'm doing more than you are!" She wondered who the wizard was, anyway. Gilderoy Lockhart had made a big deal about recruiting normal wizards for his task force- unfortunately, that meant his recruits had no training in law. She'd considered dropping out of the Aurors to join them until she read about the first arrest in the papers. If this was one of their concerned citizens, she was damn well concerned for the rest of their citizens.

Auror Moody took the man's chains from Auror Smith. "You think good and evil is so clear-cut, don't you?" He smiled thinly. "Evil is rare. What isn't is cowardliness, desperation, greed, jealousy..."

"Righteousness," Tonks said softly, meeting the gaze of the vigilante.


	3. Summer Dreams, Ripped at The Seams

Percy sat in the waiting room decorated with smiling men and women running through fields of flowers, or rather, frozen in said fields like someone had cast a body-bind on them. It must be true, then, that muggle paintings didn't move. He tapped his foot impatiently. Why exactly had Sirius Black felt the need to tell his father about the muggle mind healers, anyway? And then Dad had to listen!

"Mr. Percy Weasley, we're ready for you now," called the receptionist, a dark-haired muggle man. He smiled apologetically when Dad stood with Percy. "I'm sorry, sir, but you should stay behind. We often find teenagers speak more freely without their parents present." Dad frowned, but sat back down. So Percy walked into the office on his own.

The therapist was an elderly woman, who watched Percy far too closely as he entered the room and sat down across from her. "Hello, Percy. I'm Dr. Pond. Would you like to tell me why you're here today?"  
"I thought Dad already told you when we signed up for the appointment," Percy said, scowling. She couldn't even be bothered to look over the paperwork before he came in? At least it'd be easy to convince Dad they didn't need to come back.

She smiled. "Of course, but we find the way the patient describes their experience often directs treatment."

He twisted his hands together. "Fine. My brother Ron…" Percy took a breath, concentrating on his composure. "There was a home invasion, last September. The burglar killed my brother, Ron. Mum and Dad don't think I'm dealing with his death well."

Dr. Pond's eyes met his, gently. "Do you think you're dealing with his death well?"

He gritted his teeth. "As well as anyone deals with the death of their younger brother, ma'am."

"Then why are you blaming yourself for his death?"

"Pardon?"

She smiled grimly. "I've treated many patients over the years, Percy. I can read expressions very well. Or would you claim I'm wrong and you don't feel at fault for Ron's death?"

"I, er," he said, as he tried to think of a way to frame the situation that muggles would understand. "I left the door unlocked."

She tilted her head, curiously. "Do you live in an unsafe neighborhood?"

Percy seized that and ran with it. "Fairly unsafe, and Dad works with the government and some people don't like that. I should have realized..."

"Percy. It's not your job to protect your family," she said gently. "You're a child, who made a mistake. It happens."

She couldn't know. She couldn't truly understand. She thought he was being unreasonable, but he wasn't- "Does anyone blame you besides yourself?"

"Um," he said, because, really, even Ginny didn't blame him anymore, claimed her initial anger had been just that, a burst of irrational pique that needed some sort of target. But they should blame him…

Dr. Pond leaned forward in her seat. "Percy, just think about it. You don't need to change your mind right now." They talked for a little longer, before Dr. Pond glanced at the clock and her eyes widened- she was ten minutes late to begin her next appointment. She sent him on his way with instructions to do more thinking about all this.

When he reentered the waiting room, Dad looked up at him hopefully. "Did it help?"

Percy remembered the fight Mum and Dad had, the night before they signed him up for this appointment. "What can a muggle do to help him, Arthur?"

"Molly, these ferret-pests have worked wonders among Muggles, although they do have an awfully odd name."

Her voice lowered, so much he strained to hear it from his perch at the top of the stairs. "But the cost-"

Dad was pacing; Percy knew by the way the floorboards creaked. "Bill and Charlie are sending money home. Can't we-"

"And I wish they'd stop! They're going to need that money when they start families of their own!"

"But right now they want to help out the family they already have, Molly, can't you see that?" Dad pleaded.

Percy had gone to bed, then, unable to listen to any more without revealing himself by some small sound. Still, now, with Dad looking at him so expectantly, he was glad he'd overheard the conversation.

"No, it didn't," he lied. "I don't think we should come back."

* * *

Rita Skeeter tapped her foot impatiently, jumping back when the board she tapped on cracked with a wet, rotten sound. "This hovel is unsafe," she muttered, glaring at no one in particular. "You're sure he'll come?" She was aware she came off as a crazy witch. She was also aware that hosting the Dark Lord in her head couldn't be doing anything for her sanity. A sane woman did not kill children, after all. It didn't matter that technically Lockhart was the one who'd attacked. She'd recruited him.

He chuckled at that. _Macnair is somewhat disloyal, yes. That's the only thing that's keeping him out of prison right now, you know. And that he was sensible enough to run before they started looking for him, much like you._

"Which is why I don't think he'll come-"

 _When he's been informed the Life Eternal know of his location? Lockhart's proving an apter pupil than ever before. Did you hear the Life Eternal broke into Andromedra Tonks's house? As if I'd accept someone who married a Muggleborn._

Rita leaned against the wall, jerking away from it as she felt the plaster cave a little. "I don't remember Lockhart telling me that…" She trailed off, sudden worry eating at her heart. She hadn't remembered.

 _Perhaps your memory is simply faulty._

She never forgot anything conversational. She was no Ravenclaw, but she remembered the important things, the gossip. Knowledge, especially about people, was power, and Slytherins didn't let go of power.

Rita forgot something, and the only explanation she could think of was the rider inside her head. She'd never been more thankful said rider could not hear her thoughts- as far as she could tell, anyway.

"Bloody spiders are covering this place," an unfamiliar voice called from the main room of the hovel. Rita sighed and stepped out of the shadows to greet the aged Death Eater, Walden Macnair. He squinted at her. "Aren't you that Skeeter bint?"

She glared at him. "I am your commander and you will show me respect." She couldn't exactly respect herself anymore, anyway, so someone else needed to do it.

Macnair held up his hands defensively, and she immediately decided he must of been a Hufflepuff back in school. No Slytherin would be that deferential. "Fine, fine. You'll punish those who oppose us? Mudbloods and muggle lovers?"

She thanked Merlin that she'd never let her parentage slip. "Yes, yes," she said dismissively. "Do you have any information for us before we begin planning?"

He shrugged, indolently sprawling across the sofa. Now I remember what I hated about him, the Dark Lord muttered in her head, and she struggled not to snort with laughter. "Nah. What's our next move? Maybe we could get revenge for that kid?"

"What?" He'd gone barmy.

 _What?_

Macnair waved a hand dismissively. "The Crabbe kid. His dad was one of us, you know, and he was on the road to joining up in the old world." He seemed to think that was all the explanation that was needed, and he simply laid still for a moment before a centipede crawled out from between the dusty gray cushions and he jumped up, shrieking.

Rita struggled to keep her voice level. "What about him?" She'd thought the Malfoy boy was the only one from that year in Azkaban, and he couldn't have been one of the deaths at Halloween, since then Macnair would be complaining about why people thought Death Eaters did it. At this point in the game she saw no point in informing her Lockhart was a Death Eater, and even a more loyal one than her. (Really, what did the Aurors think she was going to do when faced with Azkaban? She thought she could probably convince the Dark Lord to destroy it at some point.)

"I thought He knew," Macnair said once he'd finished jumping about and screaming. "Mr. Crabbe fought back when the Aurors came calling and one of their curses hit the kid. He died before they could get him to St. Mungo's. Real nasty bit of business. The Aurors didn't really talk about it much…" He stopped as it suddenly dawned on him. "Even if I missed it making the papers, you wouldn't, would you, Skeeter?"

Rita smiled slowly, viciously. She could smell a story. A covered up story. Even better. "Being on the run makes it harder to get the Prophet, but my… colleague keeps me updated."

 _So the kid's dead. Why does it matter again?_

She was not her leader. She'd destroy Azkaban, and get justice for the Crabbe boy, in a way she never could when she was just a reporter. Rita had to know she was doing a good thing. But the Dark Lord wouldn't understand that.

So instead, Rita said softly, "I wonder how Minister Fudge's approval rating is looking lately."

* * *

The boy scurried through the stone corridors, his breath ragged, dodging dangerously close to the sucking cold of one of Them in the hope his pursuer wouldn't risk the loss of yet more happiness just for a bit of bread. Hell, he wasn't sure it was worth it, but he didn't stumble. They didn't stop him. He couldn't keep the tiniest bit of pleasure from forming, and tensed, worried They'd descend upon him then and there.

Nothing. Nothing. He didn't dare believe it. But the sounds of following feet had faded away from behind him. He shoved the stale bread in his mouth, glancing about to make sure no one would take it from him. The boy hadn't been certain Greyback would stop. The werewolf wasn't very sane even when in human form. At least They sequestered the creature when it turned.

He swallowed, shivering as a draft from who knew where brushed over him, and went forth in search of another alcove to sleep in. Sometimes it seemed the prison never ended, and he certainly wasn't going back towards Greyback if he could help it.

The boy wondered again, a few minutes later as he came upon a small hall, why They hadn't stopped him. He concentrated on not feeling any joy as he took a tentative step forward, staring at the ragged man curled up against the back wall. Long blond hair hid his face. "Father?" Father didn't respond. The boy stepped closer, crouching before him. "Father, it's me, Draco. Father?" He brushed Father's hair aside from his face.

The boy scrambled away, vomiting the little food he'd managed to consume. He huddled, shivering, against the opposite wall, staring at the… thing that had once been his father.

In Azkaban, the Kissed were easy to recognize.

* * *

Remus received another letter on the seventeenth of August from the wolves. It was short, short and simple. Decide, or you will have no influence over the proceedings.

He sought out Sirius, in Grimmauld Place, perhaps unconsciously, he later thought. James and Sirius had always been the ringleaders of their little group, after all. He wanted Sirius to make the decision for him. Probably silly of him, but instinct was instinct.

"There's so much out there against us," Remus told Sirius softly, slumped onto the thankfully Doxie-free couch. "Most people won't even hire me." He took another sip of his Firewhiskey. When he'd arrived, Sirius took one look at his expression before pouring them both glasses. He'd already refilled them once.

Sirius grimaced. "This group is planning on riding on the coattails of the house elf freedom movement?"

Remus nodded, thinking of the irony. Dobby was the only house elf he'd ever heard of who wanted freedom, yet a movement to free the elves had gained more traction than the one to get trials for the Slytherin children and the other Death Eaters or the movement to grant werewolves proper rights. It was almost, he thought bitterly, as though wizards didn't fear house elves.

His friend set his glass down harder than strictly necessary. "And the house elf movement relies legally on the future coming true." He huffed a breath of bitter laughter. "Remember Hogwarts? When we didn't know shit about morality so everything was easy?" 'Course, they both knew that 'not knowing shit about morality' had led to their torment of Severus and others. The easiness didn't last.

And nothing was simple anymore. "It's not like house elves don't deserve rights too," Remus agreed. "Bloody hell, I'm surprised goblins aren't trying for wands again."

His friend snorted. "Don't give them any ideas." He stared blearily at his empty glass. "Kreacher?" The house elf popped into visibility, already holding the bottle. "How much you want to bet he's poisoned it?" Sirius asked after the elf left. He'd offered to free him a while back, he'd told Remus. The house elf threw a fit about Sirius ruining all the black treasures. "Crazy thing is, you've got more in common with those kids in Azkaban than you do with house elves."

"How so?"

Sirius gesticulated as he spoke; Remus leaned away to avoid getting smacked in the face. "People fear you for what you might do. For what you have the potential to be, not really what you are. You're my best friend, Remus, but you've got to admit you can harm someone more easily than the average house elf can."

It seemed Sirius was wiser when he was drunk. "I'd have to be foolish to disagree," Remus admitted. "And those kids… most of them did kill in the future." He wasn't certain about the youngest, the current twelve and thirteen year olds, but he remembered facing some of the older students on the final battlefield.

He was fairly certain he remembered killing them.

Sirius nodded, jerkily. "You should join up with the protest group, Remus."

"But the kids…"

"No one's killing the house elf freedom movement, Remus. It's too strong. Hogwarts freed theirs even though it was their students who were taken. Bloody Arabella Zabini freed hers last week, and that woman's as dark as you can get without being a Death Eater." He waved a hand, knocking over his glass, and watched bemusedly as the amber liquid soaked into the white carpet. Remus picked up the glass, but Sirius shook his head when offered it. "I think I've had too much already." Softly, he said," One more push, Remus. One more big push and the Ministry will free the confiscated ones."

Remus winced. Put it that way... "So basically, I can't make the situation any worse."

Sirius shrugged, before awkwardly slinging a comforting arm over his friend's shoulders. "You might just make it better. Get people to draw the connection between the prisoners and you guys.

If only it were that simple. "The law-"

"Screw the law, seriously." He stood, pacing up and down the room. "We could always find a different one to focus on." His hands clenched into fists. "The Wizengamot isn't supposed to send people to Azkaban without a trial, either, but it's apparently okay because they're evil! Give me a break! Everybody knew I did it and they were wrong!"

"Sirius," Remus asked, "How's therapy going?"

His friend, the only one left, really, caught the implied question and muttered, "Sorry. I just don't know what to do anymore."  
"Nobody does. That's life."


	4. There's A Kind-of, A Sort-of, Cost

I do not own Harry Potter, nor Wicked for that matter.

Sidenote: There is a mention in this chapter of Colin Creevy escaping the final battle. This is not a mistake- far as the character thinking it knows, Colin didn't come back to fight.

* * *

Percy split up from the twins the moment he boarded the train, mostly because he knew they refused to believe he was okay. They hadn't pranked him all summer. He almost felt offended, and wasn't that strange?

He wandered through the corridors, trying to find the emptiest compartment he could, which wasn't hard. Parents who withdrew their students last year had sent them back again once they found out Lockhart was teaching this year, but the full presence of all the other houses couldn't compensate for the shrunken size of Slytherin, who huddled together in two cars all totalled, glaring at anyone who passed by. It really was quite pathetic, Percy thought, carefully not comparing it to his search for an empty car because he didn't want to be pitied. There was nothing in common between the two scenarios. Nope, nothing at all.

Apparently he and his family were natural trouble magnets, though, because when he stumbled into the last compartment, it was occupied by Luna Lovegood and Padma Patil arguing quietly. Well, Padma was arguing. Luna Lovegood just occasionally interjected wry commentary while flipping through the Quibbler. The latest was a soft, "So you've started listening to Morag and Sue now?"

Padma winced. "Well, when they're not blowing up half the potions classroom or adapting muggle inventions for the wizarding world. Thank the gods they aren't friends with the Twins."

Percy struggled to fight a laugh. Yes, it was obvious when wizards referred to his siblings instead of any other set of twins. There was something of an inflection to it, an audible capital letter. But he didn't want to interrupt, so instead he made for the compartments beyond, which would almost certainly be empty. Or at least, he did until Luna Lovegood called out to him, "You can sit with us, Percy. Padma's busy trying to convince me the Wrackspurt infestation in Ravenclaw has died out."

"What?" Percy asked, startled.

"See, Padma? The wrackspurt infestation can't have died out, because they've got Percy," Luna said, lifting up her Quibbler once again.

Padma turned about in her seat to mouth, "Humor her," at Percy. He stumbled back and took a seat besides Padma, as the clearly more sane member of the pairing. "Luna, Percy's not a Ravenclaw," Padma said, leaning forward in her seat earnestly. "He's a Gryffindor, like the twins-"

"I know that," Luna said, peering over the top of her magazine. "But obviously Penelope Clearwater infected him while they were dating, both this time and in the old world."

Percy blinked. He couldn't recall being this flummoxed in quite a while. "Er… I don't think Penelope had wrackspurts, whatever they are." Hopefully not a disease. Penelope would hex this girl into next week if she implied that, then hex Percy for not hexing Luna at the implication, despite them having broken up. There were some things you just didn't imply.

Luna shut her magazine firmly, dropping it on the seat beside her. Percy squinted to read the title. Cover-ups at the Ministry: What the Lux Conclave Doesn't Want You to Know. Alright… "Of course you don't think she had wrackspurts," Luna said firmly. "You're infected with wrackspurts, too, so they won't let you think they're real because they're fairy opposites." He stared at her blankly. "You have to believe in fairies to make them real? You have to believe in Wrackspurts to vanish them? The state of the educational system nowadays, I swear..." She sighed huffily.

Padma shook her head. "Luna, that's a logical paradox. If Wrackspurts are made unreal when you believe in them, aren't you believing in a false thing?"

"You'd think that, because you're infected by the Wrackspurts," she said, not a flicker of a smile playing about her lips. "But you believe in paradoxes all the time, Padma. You believe in your right to attend a school in the wizarding world, because you can learn magic, don't you?"

Percy remained silent. He'd indirectly heard enough of Hermione's social justice arguments in the old world to figure out where this was going, after all, though he hadn't realized Luna was like that. "Of course," Padma said, though her expression said, "Not this again.

"But, say, a Squib like Filch or Morag's brother has to go to a Muggle school if they want any education, even though they can learn things like Potions perfectly well?"

Padma groaned. "Not you, too. I hear enough about Squib rights from Morag. Look, her brother is going to a wonderful Muggle school-"

Luna quirked an eyebrow. "Because her family can afford it, unlike Argus Filch's, who resorted to begging some previous Headmaster to take him on as a glorified janitor. And you wonder why he's bitter."

"Excuse me," Percy interrupted, and both Ravenclaw girls fixed intent looks upon him. "But by your definition, who isn't infected with Wrackspurts?"

Luna smiled, fingering her bottle-cap earrings. "Well, me, obviously, because I've taken proper precautions. I've found Morag and Sue to be less susceptible, though I suspect that's just fumes from potions gone wrong resulting in their brains too toxic to let the creatures set up residence." Percy choked back a startled laugh. "And Hermione is curiously susceptible for a muggleborn-"

"Now you've done it," Padma whispered to Percy, who was too busy listening to something he'd consider outright foolish the last time around.

He had, after all, been rather foolish back then. The last time around, he'd also thought a dream predicting the future of the entire wizarding world was impossible.

* * *

Neville watched the head table carefully from the moment he sat down. Yes, there was Susan's aunt Amelia, their new Head of House and History of Magic professor, already seated at the head table. She dressed like his gran, in tightly pressed, starched formal robes, and for a moment he worried she'd be as strict and intimidating as her, until she smiled at the first-year students, a couple of which were shifting from foot to foot nervously. Yes, she'd be kind.

Gilderoy Lockhart hadn't arrived yet; Neville thought it likely he wanted to make a dramatic entrance. He wondered if they'd have to deal with all the girls sighing over him again. At least Gran never supported any of that nonsense.

But who was the new Herbology Professor? He couldn't see any new faces at the head table, and while he was profoundly grateful to Hagrid for his promise to tend to the greenhouses over the summer, he remembered only too well Harry and Ron's stories about the horrors of Care of Magical Creatures. Give the man access to an Exploding Pear in the presence of students, and who knew what would happen? (Neville wasn't pretentious about herbology, exactly. It was just that the boundaries between magical creatures and magical plants were somewhat ill-defined in the wizarding world, for example mandrakes, and he felt wizards had a tendency to define the most dangerous species as plants.)

They'd better have a Herbology professor. Gran would of done it, but her skill really lay more with Transfiguration, and oddly enough, a spot of Divination, than anything else. Bloody hell, if he'd thought there was any chance of the Headmaster letting him, he'd ask to teach Herbology himself. He knew more than some of the NEWT students, even.

Neville's thoughts were interrupted by the announcement of the sorting. He set himself to listening to the song, curious to see how it had changed for the new timeline.

 _Long ago in days of yore,_

 _Four young soldiers gathered._

 _Though I'd rather they were scholars,_

 _The arts of war they mastered._

 _Courageous Gryffindor flung Fiendfyre far_

 _And mourned the lives it took,_

 _While cunning Slytherin rallied an army_

 _Whose blood, pure or not, stained his books._

 _Humble Hufflepuff poisoned the plants_

 _Unleashing a murderous blight,_

 _And clever Ravenclaw engineered a plague,_

 _For dying warriors cannot fight._

 _Eventually these soldiers won at great costs_

 _And left the battlefield for good._

 _But they felt the need for amends_

 _So these soldiers became scholars of brotherhood._

 _Night after night they regretted war_

 _Brother against brother, daughter against mother,_

 _But they never truly escaped the discord_

 _That eventually divided one from another._

 _Soldiers became scholars, once._

 _Will these scholars become soldiers?_

 _I can't know, not truly,_

 _Anything but in which house you'll grow older._

It fell silent, and the room released a collective breath. Susan whispered to Neville, "Well. That's certainly different."

"Is it true?" Neville asked her. He'd never seen anything anywhere about the founders being soldiers, after all.

She gave him the dirtiest look she could manage. "Even if it isn't, and why would the hat lie to us, the message has a point."

He had to agree with that, before Ernie Macmillian hushed them because the Sorting began. He paid more attention this time to the Hufflepuff names than the ones last time, but as far as he could tell, no one was Sorted differently, except the Slytherins.

See, each time McGonagall called a future Slytherin, they put on the hat and after a long minute, it announced, "Hufflepuff!" or "Gryffindor!" or "Ravenclaw!" but never Slytherin. The remaining Slytherins, now including only third through seventh years and few at that, were poised to clap at Astoria Greengrass's sorting. They only froze, and stared at her as she strode over to the Hufflepuff table, head held high, and took a seat by Neville and Susan. By the time the last apparently not so Slytherin went to the hat, they'd given up looking hopeful.

Neville exchanged a glance with Hermione, who at the Ravenclaw table had moved aside for a burly student who looked nothing like a first year to sit. _We'll talk later,_ she mouthed. Good. If the Ravenclaws couldn't figure out why all the Slytherins were jumping ship, no one could.

Dumbledore rose at the head table, and the room fell silent. "Before the feast, we have a few announcements to make. The Forbidden Forest is still restricted for all students." For once, he didn't shoot the customary look to Fred and George Weasley, who hadn't pranked much last year, but to a pair of older Slytherin boys, who quickly hid their clasped hands under the table, one blushing fiercely. (Neville had gotten better at noticing things like that in the old world, when alliances forming and breaking among the students could determine the life or death of the DA.)

"I would also like to welcome three new teachers this year," Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling in that inscrutable way he had. "We have Professor Amelia Bones, most recently the Head of Magical Law Enforcement, which makes her uniquely qualified to teach History of Magic, along with assuming the position of Head of Hufflepuff House." Polite clapping followed, loudest of all from Neville and his fellow Hufflepuffs. "We also welcome-"

The doors to the Great Hall blew open, and Neville tensed at first, suspecting an attack, before Gilderoy Lockhart strode in, flashing his perfect white teeth. Neville gritted his own, as Headmaster Dumbledore said, somehow managing not to sigh in exasperation, "Professor Gilderoy Lockhart, who will teach Defense against the Dark Arts."

Lockhart took the opportunity to pose for a picture by Colin Creevy, who grinned almost as enthusiastically as Neville remembered. (At least he knew he'd got the kid out before the final battle, with all the rest, though being on the run while unable to do magic due to the trace couldn't of been easy.) "I swear to keep this school safe-"

"I'm dreadfully sorry, my broom broke down on the way here, had to perform an emergency repair, you know how it is," the dark-haired, dark-skinned witch with- was that a Frozen Blood Rose in her braided hair? Frozen Blood Rose, the component of a potion that froze dark curses in ones body at the right dosage far more easily than any healer's spell and at the wrong dosage, turned ones entire body into ice? Frozen Blood Rose, which had to be planted by the light of a blue moon and harvested during a solar eclipse, and needed three drops, no more, no less, of willingly given blood daily at the sun's zenith? He nearly missed her next words, so entranced was he. "Oh, no, am I interrupting?" she said, smiling sweetly at Lockhart.

He flushed, but muttered, "Not at all."

"And Professor Arabella Zabini, who will teach Herbology," Dumbledore said, expressionless.

Astoria nudged Susan, gesturing at Neville. "I think he's in love," she said, laughing.

* * *

Astoria Greengrass had chosen Hufflepuff for two very special reasons. First, not even the Hat could deny her absolute loyalty to her sister's memory, though it'd counseled her that loyalty so absolute it bordered on obsession was unhealthy. Ha! What would be unhealthy would be not getting proper revenge, and no self-respecting Death Eater would fear a Hufflepuff. It was always better to let your enemy underestimate you.

She'd done her research. She'd need proper training before she'd be ready, and unfortunately, the Life Eternal wasn't taking eleven-year-olds. But their leader now lived and worked at Hogwarts. And Slytherins, which she was as much as she was a Hufflepuff, certainly knew how to influence adults to their needs.

Astoria knocked firmly on Lockhart's office door, and smiled beseechingly at the beaming man when he opened the door. "Are you here for an autograph? I usually only sign them during my official sessions, but I'm sure I could make an exception for such a sweet young girl."

She tilted her head so her short blond hair framed her face just right. "Professor Lockhart, I'm Astoria Greengrass," she said, with just the right amount of tremble in her voice.

His smile thinned. "Ah. I'm dearly sorry about your sister, poor child. Once I reached the scene the Death Eaters fled, no doubt terrified by my reputation, but I was…" He swallowed, expression haunted. "Too late to save your sister."

"I know," she said, and he recoiled somewhat. Astoria twisted a strand of hair about her finger. "I want to learn to defend myself and protect others so nothing like that ever happens again."

Some of the tension in Professor Lockhart's shoulders slackened. "Well," he said, "I will be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, and once we figure out where to house members of the Life Eternal here, they will stand by to defend the school against any and all threats."

But the Life Eternal wouldn't seek out revenge for her. "Why don't you just host them in unused classrooms? It's not like there aren't plenty of them around." Or the Room of Requirement, she thought, but if he didn't know about it already she sure wasn't going to be the one to tell him.

"Preparations must be made," he said vaguely. Yes, that was the look of a man who hadn't thought of the idea but was in no way going to admit it. She mentally shrugged. If it got her her way, there was no harm in him taking credit for the idea. "I'll get about signing that autograph, shall I?"

Astoria shook her head. "I don't want an autograph. Well, not right now, anyway," she amended, because she was still talking to what amounted to a Slytherin hero, despite his Ravenclaw youth. Someone who fulfilled their ambitions so successfully was a rare creature anywhere, and she admired him greatly.

Professor Lockhart didn't seem to know what to say, glancing back into his office nervously at the posters of himself plastered along the wall. Astoria strengthened her smile. Obviously she wasn't innocent-looking enough. "I was wondering if you'd make a club here. To train people who want to join the Life Eternal when they grow up."

His smile returned so quickly she wasn't really certain it ever left, even as his eyes widened, near imperceptibly. "Oh, of course. Yes, lovely idea. I'd heard my predecessor had a dueling and Defense Against the Dark Arts club now unfortunately left leaderless, as well. I'm sure they wouldn't object to my taking over and converting it a little."

Astoria was sure they would, if only because some people couldn't compromise at all, but they'd eventually subside, if only because their little club wouldn't survive without Lockhart. Now to seal the deal. "Can I be your first member?"

Oddly enough, as she shook Professor Lockhart's hand to seal the deal, a thought unbidden came to her, about her imprisoned future boyfriend. Pity, that, in some ways, and in others, a relief. She thought it likely that if he'd been at Hogwarts with her sister, he would be dead now, despite working with the Death Eaters in the future. (What self-respecting Death Eater killed Slytherins, anyway? Slytherins were their main recruiting base!)

Astoria remembered him drawing her aside into a closet towards the end of the last year of the dream. He checked her unblemished wrist, more wild-eyed by the day. "Carrow was saying it was about time you take the Mark. You should run, Tori. If you take the Mark they'll own you."

She'd hushed him and stalled 'till the end of the year, knowing it'd be easier to run when she got home, but Draco worried near daily about her getting irrevocably entangled in the cult that had ensnared his entire family, except the blood traitor cousins, of course.

 _Why do I remember this now?_ She left the room with her head held high. _The Life Eternal are nothing like the Death Eaters._


	5. There are Worse Things I Could Do

Harry barely got the question out of his mouth before Angelina looked up from her textbook, a bushy eyebrow quirked up. "We don't even know who will be Quidditch captain this year, Harry. Or if there even will be Quidditch."

"What?" One of the students playing Gobstones by the common room fireplace glared at him, and he lowered his voice slightly, though really, Fred and George were making far more noise than him, telling some bawdy joke about a giantess and a goblin that had one of the first year girls covering her ears while another giggled maniacally. "Why not?"

Angelina gave him the Look. "You saw the games last year, Harry." He winced. "Exactly. Only one that was worth anything was the Ravenclaw-Gryffindor game. Maybe the 'Puffs will be better now that they're done mourning Sprout, but Slytherin can't field a decent team anymore." She shrugged and went back to her book, an advanced Charms text. "There simply aren't enough of them left that're any good at the sport."

Harry briefly wished Malfoy were still here, since while he was never real competition for the snitch, he was at least better than nothing, but then came to his senses. No longer getting hexed in the hallways was worth it. Still, he had to ask, "Why can't we play against other schools? Muggle schools do it all the time."

She paused, closing her book over her hand as a bookmark, and met his gaze. "You know, I don't rightly know. I'll have to ask McGonagall. It's not like the other schools don't play." Harry amused himself by thinking of the prissy Beauxbatons students riding about on brooms. Fleur had turned out nice and all in the end, but he didn't really see her as a Quidditch player. Angelina snapped him back to attention, though, when she said, "But really, Harry, you'll be okay without Quidditch. You've got your house elf campaign and all that."

"Hermione's campaign. I'm just along for the ride."  
"Whatever," she said, pulling her hand out of her book with an emphatic gesture, before she realized. "Oh, bloody hell. It'll take me forever to find the page on Cheering Charms as a historical torture method again." Harry blinked, and she rolled her eyes. "Something about using it to draw wild Dementors. Anyway, you have other interests, unlike some of us. I don't know what Wood would have done were he still here without Quidditch."

Harry thought on this for a moment, drawing his legs up onto the couch beside him. "Cry, probably."

Fred, who had finally managed to scare all the first-years into going to bed, ambled past. "Wood? He'd be bawling like a baby," he said cheerfully. He gave Angelina a kiss on the cheek, then sprinted for the stairs to the boys' tower, laughing.

"You know I can get up there, right?" she called after him, but she was grinning anyway. "That boy has no shame." Angelina glanced at the currently empty picture frame above the fireplace. "Though it is really quite strange flirting with him while his brother is there."

Harry cleared his throat, trying to call her attention back to the conversation. They couldn't let Quidditch die. "But really, Quidditch and Gobstone tourneys are the only forms of organized entertainment this school has. Maybe the dueling club if Lockhart takes it up and doesn't ruin it. In my old fourth year, people showed up just to stare at a hedge maze for hours!"

She grimaced. "I remember."

That's right, she'd wanted to be in the tournament, he remembered, though she'd never seemed particularly angry at him for getting enrolled, unlike some other people he knew. He glanced at the empty portrait, too. Ron's portrait matched the impulsive boy he knew, but it just wasn't the same. Nothing was the same.

Angelina crossed her arms over her chest huffily. Well, that at least was the same. "The dragons were neat, at least, but couldn't they of shown us what was happening inside?"

Maybe if they'd shown what was happening Cedric wouldn't of died, Harry thought savagely. Instead, he said, "No wonder Fred and George are always playing pranks, and they're on the team. I hated my cousin Dudley, but I have to admit he was involved in a lot less trouble when his school forced him to be in a extracurricular. I didn't appreciate the wrestling moves Smeltings taught him, though."

"What's-"

"Like dueling but for muggles."

"Ah.," she said, a word loaded with a remarkable amount of understanding.

He looked away, because yes, he'd hated Dudley, but his cousin became a better person later on if he remembered the dream correctly, and it was unfair to speak ill of the dead, his aunt and uncle had at least taught him that much. "But that's not the point. Hogwarts needs Quidditch."

Angelina opened up her Charms book, flipping through the contents to find the right page. "You've spent too much time with the Ravenclaws. That was not the argument of a normal twelve-year-old."

Harry decided arguing some more couldn't hurt his case when he'd gotten this far. "Hermione got me into politics, and have I ever been normal?"

She snorted, then let out an exultant cheer when she turned to a page with a particularly gristly drawing of a young man's face locked into the rictus of something that could only be called a smile by the virtue of the corners of the lips being turned up. "I can't deny you're right. But we can't field a team if no one else does, and it'll take a while to set up an inter-school Quidditch league. Hogwarts doesn't follow all the official rules."

Harry wanted to ask about the differences, because he'd never gone to a non-school game apart from the cup, but he could tell Angelina wanted to get back to her studies. For some unfathomable reason. "But we need Quidditch," he said, throwing in one last protest.

"We do. Tell you what. Even if we can't get the other houses to field teams, we'll arrange regular pickup games among those still willing to play. It's better than nothing."

He couldn't argue with that.

...

Colin Creevy hurried to keep up with the older boy, camera weighing down his neck. "Can I have a picture, Neville?"

Neville finally stopped, turning to face him with a frown. "Why do you want a picture of me, Colin? I thought you prefered to follow Harry about." He crossed his arms over his chest.

Colin matched the look, though he knew he was in no way intimidating. "Because I'm taking pictures of the heroes of the new and old wizarding world, and of those we lost," he said, softly. "I haven't heard back from the parents besides Mrs. Weasley yet on getting old pictures of the children who died, but none of them should be forgotten." He smiled slightly. "My brother, Dennis, likes to write and tell stories, so we figured we'd work on it together. It'll be a long project 'specially since this version of the wizarding war isn't near over yet, but we need some form of memorial."

"What brought this on?" Neville asked, leaning against the stone wall next to a suit of armor, which shifted slightly to adopt the same posture.

If Neville didn't know Colin had died towards the end of the old world, he sure as bloody hell wasn't going to tell him. Dennis knew, and that was it, unless someone had found his body. "I was thirteen when Harry brought back Cedric's body, Neville," he said instead. "I was fifteen when my Headmaster died. I was sixteen when I had to go on the run just to survive, and nearly seventeen when a battle to determine the fate of humanity was fought in my school. No one can stay the same after that, and I'd be a fool to still chase celebrity above all else."

"We are the children of Hogwarts," Neville muttered. It'd been the rallying cry of the DA in their final year. "Nobody was a child at that point, were they?"

Colin smiled, bitterly. "At least Harry and the other people on the run in your year group were seventeen. Dennis and I still had the Trace on us and weren't the legal age in the Muggle world, either." They'd spent a lot of time in homeless shelters with their parents, knowing their home would be the first place the Death Eaters would look. "Sometimes we'd travel with a legal age Muggleborn and some of the other kids for a while, but if the snatchers came, the ones who could legally use magic would stay behind to buy us time." He'd totally already taken Dean Thomas and Su Li's pictures- without their help, he and his brother and a lot of other Muggleborn kids would have died. "What about the eleven-year-olds, the ones who didn't know about the situation at Hogwarts?" he asked, dreading the answer.

"Taken as they got off the train," Neville said, eyes half closed. "We didn't even have a chance to do anything about it. Probably lucky to not be executed."

"Sad when that's all we can say for the state of our school." Colin lifted his camera. "You still saved a lot of people with the DA, you know. Totally belong in the Heroes of Hogwarts Anthology." He paused, frowning. "Though we're not sure about the name yet."

Neville shook his head, which the suit of armor also mimicked, at least until he glared at it, and then it slumped its shoulders in a facsimile of regret. "If you say so," the older student said.

Colin took the picture, and lowered his camera. "Thanks for all you've done for the school," he told Neville softly, before turning away to race to class. He'd heard from one of the other students that Professor Snape had actually been acting on Dumbledore's orders and spying on Voldemort. Now to get him to agree to have his picture taken...

...

Rita leaned forward in her dusty armchair, smiling disarmingly at the heavyset, sniffling woman who sat opposite to her, even as she inwardly wondered when exactly this hotel room (Mrs. Morgana Crabbe had refused to disclose the location of her new home) had last seen a good Scourgify. "Now, Mrs. Crabbe, can you tell me about your son?"

She blew her nose noisily into a red polka-dotted handkerchief."You have to understand, Rhonda, was it?" Rita nodded. "Matthew… I know he was a Death Eater. I know you think he's wrong, that he targeted innocent people." Rita barely resisted the urge to snort at that remark. The only reason she hadn't been targeted in the old world was everyone assumed her childhood house meant she couldn't be a Mudblood. Nobody bothered to investigate someone who never wrote anything unflattering about the Dark Lord. So what Mrs. Crabbe said next made her eyes widen just a little with surprise. "Maybe he did. I think the Mudbloods are taking our culture, but they should be kept out. Killing is a little extreme."

Oh, how much she loved talking to purebloods. "Your family, Mrs. Crabbe."

"Yes, yes. I'm just establishing context. My husband promised his activities would never come back to our family, see? And after so many years, we thought we were safe." Rita resisted the urge to say a proper Slytherin never grew complacent, and wondered disdainfully if the woman before her was secretly a Hufflepuff, as she pushed a tray of desserts towards her. "Biscuit?"

"No, thank you. Please continue."

She wiped her tears away again. "Sorry. But after the dream, the Aurors came for him." Rita had heard. It wasn't every day most of the old pureblood families lost at least their head all at the same time. She'd really wished she were there to write the story. "Of course he fought back. It wasn't like he did anything wrong, you see?" She fell silent for a long moment, one which Rita occupied by wishing she would stop making excuses for her husband and just get to the juicy bit. She should be proud of him, really. Rita nearly jumped in her seat. She'd almost forgotten He was there, as much as she could ever forget. He seemed to be near as interested in the story as she was, given how quiet he'd been during it. "But one of the Aurors shot a bone-breaker curse at Matthew. They aimed for his wand arm. I think they just wanted to disable him, really."

Oh. She could already see where this was going. "But they didn't."

Mrs. Crabbe nodded, closing her eyes, and said in one big rush, "Vinny came in to see what all the noise was about. I love him, but he was never particularly bright. Matthew dodged, and eleven-year-olds are so much shorter than adults…" She stopped, swallowing.

"The curse hit him?" State the obvious, will you? She ignored the voice in her head, as she'd grown accustomed to doing when he was just monologuing or indulging in actually having someone to snark to.

Besides, it gave Mrs. Crabbe the incentive she needed to finish. "In the neck," she said. "The aurors snapped Vinny's neck. My husband went quietly, after that. He didn't want to delay Vinny getting help, but…" She shook her head, a movement far more powerful than any nose-blowing sessions. "My son was dead before he hit the ground."

Rita gave her a moment of respectful silence before she asked, "Why didn't you say anything before now?"

She laughed bitterly. "I was raised to trust the Aurors. They're supposed to be here to protect us. And some of them still favor the pureblood cause even now, you know. In the last war, the members of the Order of the Phoenix were arrested nearly as often as the Death Eaters." They'd never mentioned any of that in her history lessons. That's because no one at Hogwarts wants to admit there's still people who support me in power. "Worse than the Life Eternal, that lot was. I thought the Auror would be written up, fired, disgraced, something!"

The poor dear had far too much trust in authority. "And when that didn't happen?" Rita asked, because it had, after all, been over a year.

Mrs. Crabbe pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket again, regarded it critically, and cleaned it with a quick "Scourgify," before dabbing at her eyes. "I thought… I thought they would make my son out to be a villain."

"What?"

"Vincent never took the Mark," she explained. "Matthew wanted to give him the chance for other options, and once you take the Mark, you have no other options, not really. But he hung about that crowd. His father and his best friend both had the Mark. He was in Slytherin, and that's enough to convict him in some eyes. He used Fiendfyre. What if they say he deserved to die?"

Rita raised an eyebrow. "No one claimed Ronald Weasley deserved to die."

Mrs. Crabbe stared at her. "Of course they didn't. Ronald Weasley was a Gryffindor eleven-year-old from an Order of the Phoenix family murdered by a Death Eater, and a hero in the old world. No one ever says a hero deserved to die." Well, besides his enemies. "My Vincent was a Slytherin eleven-year-old from a Death Eater family murdered by an Auror, and as good as a Death Eater in some eyes in the old world. No one mourns the wicked."

"But he was a child," she said. "Surely he'd earn some tears just due to that?" My, my, Rita, what faith you have in this world. She'd insulted the Granger girl in the old world, but she'd been fourteen by that point, and chose the public eye by associating so closely with Potter. And all she'd done was imply things about the girl's sexuality, not claimed she needed to die. (The girl had such a Gryffindor response. A Slytherin girl would have owned it proudly, because being able to seduce someone that famous was quite impressive. Rita'd tried with Dumbledore once, but he didn't even look down her shirt.)

"You didn't see the Prophet letters claiming Zabini, Davis, and Greengrass earned karmic retribution for their deaths by Death Eater hands, did you?" She hadn't kept up with the Prophet much, only the information Lockhart relayed to her at this point, so she shook her head, trying to remain expressionless at the thought of the memory of the children Lockhart killed accidentally being disgraced so. Why had she never yelled at him properly about that incident, anyway? "I thought not. And they were only Slytherin, not more deeply associated with the Death Eaters. My son… please don't let them demonize him."

They shook on it, though honestly, Rita didn't know how she could stop them.


	6. Listen Close To Everybody's Heart

The knock on the door to Greenhouse 5 came at precisely sunset. Professor Arabella Zabini, and oh how she liked the sound of that, knew because she was currently in the process of weeding a very delicate Merlin's Ivy that only withdrew its extremely poisonous spines at said time. Poor plant had gone neglected the whole summer, but that was to be expected; the big lug who'd tended the greenhouses probably would have crushed the plant if he so much as looked at it sideways.

"Come in," she called, because there was no point in pretending she wasn't there, she couldn't leave her position, and if whoever it was couldn't handle the plants, they'd better have the wits to stay in the doorway.

She heard the door open, and about three footsteps fall before Gilderoy Lockhart's voice called nervously, "Is this really safe?"

He couldn't see her smile, not with her bent over her plants the way she was, so she allowed herself a small grin. _Oh, Dumbledore, how was I supposed to know he couldn't recognize a Blossoming Mugwump? Such a shame, really, but he always recognized the carnivorous plants perfectly fine in his books._ "Why, of course, Gilderoy. I'm sure you know how to conduct yourself around plants." The Acer Igniferous nibbled affectionately at her ear, and she batted it away, giving it a quick, reassuring pat before it could burst into flames at the rejection. She was fairly sure she heard Gilderoy gulp. Either that or it was the Blossoming Mugwump.

"Of course I do," he said. She did not sigh in disappointment. There would be plenty of other opportunities. "I wanted to apologize."

Arabella pulled one last weed and stood, stepping back just as the sun slipped beneath the horizon. The spines of the Merlin's Ivy snapped back into place violently, dripping with luminescent green poison. "Why, whatever for?" she asked sweetly, turning to face the rapidly paling Gilderoy.

He took a step back. "For your son's death. During the Halloween incident." The Devil's Snare tapped a vine to the back of his ankle, and he jumped forward, shrieking.

"It's just tasting you, Gilderoy," she said, just to see the look on his face, which was really quite satisfying. "Of course, I've accepted now you couldn't do anything to save him." This was a blatant lie. "A hero like you must have hated your powerlessness."

Though Gilderoy's expression twisted with disgust at the term, wisely enough he did not deny he was powerless. A pity, that. "He died too young," he said, looking away, blond hair falling over his face.

Arabella scooped up her bucket of weeds to feed to the Murderous Magnolia, which really only murdered if one didn't feed it its vegetables. "He was my only child," she said. Fertility issues ran in many pureblood families. She'd had to lay Blaise's father in her garden on the night of the new moon on a bed of nettle, clover, and dandelions before cutting out his heart and eating it in order to conceive. The experiment had never worked again.

She should know- she'd tried.

Arabella thought it was the magic, really. Concentrated magic over generations did funny things to bloodlines. It had whitened the Malfoys' hair, drove the Blacks insane, and probably resulted in the infertility that seemed to plague every pure family besides the Weasleys. (And if the children weren't all obviously related, she'd suspect the parents of abducting them. As it was, she figured magic had simply decided it liked redheads.) "He was my only," she repeated, softer now. She tossed a handful of weeds to the plant, which spat acid into the pile, liquefying it. The green glop sunk slowly into the earth, to be digested by the roots at a later date. "He was to continue the family name, but other than that, I didn't care what he did with his life. I just wanted him to be happy."

Last time around, sixth year he'd come home crying one day. Apparently there was a girl, a Ravenclaw, who didn't return his affections. She'd offered to threaten her family so she'd complied and he'd flatly refused. He'd always been a strangely principled boy. "He was a good boy." And not just by her motherly standards.

"He didn't deserved to die."

Gilderoy backed slowly towards the door. "You may think this an impertinent question," he said. She chanced a glance at him, and he flushed brightly. "But what house were you in when in Hogwarts?"

"Gilderoy, darling, I never attended Hogwarts." She dumped the rest of the weeds in front of the magnolia and faced him fully, flashing a bitter smile. "But if I weren't homeschooled, well, my entire family has _always_ gone Slytherin."

Gilderoy whispered, "That's what I thought." He left without another word.

Arabella checked the plants one last time. Her plants, now. She'd transferred a few of her favorites from her home garden here, but the rest would be left neglected. If nothing else, the Blossoming Mugwump would keep thieves away.

She didn't have a plan yet, but she had time. There was no curse on the Herbology position.

* * *

Ginny Weasley heard him calling for her, and briefly considered a Bat Boogey Hex before deciding to simply get the conversation over with. She slowed just before the stairs and turned to him. (Everyone knew what happened to students who paused on the stairs, and oftentimes it wasn't very pretty.)

Harry Potter scrambled to a stop just before he could bump into her. "Hey, Ginny," he said, smiling. "I've wanted to speak to you-"

"Ron is dead," she said, and watched his smile falter. "Your only reason to get with me instead of one of your other adoring fangirls has disappeared. So go ahead. You owe me nothing."

"Ginny, I never dated you because I owed you," Harry said. He looked away, fiddling, with his glasses. "And I know that isn't really what you think."

She scowled. "Bloody Harry Potter knows my own bloody thoughts even better than I do, apparently." She waited for him to call her on her language, so she could have something else to flip out about. When he didn't, she said, "Where were you when Ron died, Harry? Your own best mate, and you weren't even there."

"I don't know what you want, Ginny. I didn't even know the dream was real, not then, and I didn't have proof, either. I got my letter, but since my aunt and uncle gave in I didn't meet Hagrid and either because of Malfoy's arrest or just because of going shopping on a different day I didn't meet him, either. I wasn't sure until the train, when Fred and George talked to me, that it wasn't all just one big delusion." Harry swallowed. "And they implied pretty strongly that you wouldn't open a letter from me."

Ginny crossed her arms over her chest, glad there was no one around to listen in on their conversation. "I'm not the shy little bird I was last time at this age."

"I never said you were."

"I'm not the fiery redhead warrior you knew later on, either."

Harry grinned. "You're doing a pretty good impression of her right now, though. I am terribly sorry about Ron, you know," he added, more somber now.

Ginny closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. "You never knew him, Harry. Not really. Not in this world. Do you even mourn him?" Silence answered her. "I thought so. It's hard to care about someone you only know from a dream. The emotions fade, like a memory with all the best parts taken out. Turns into just a photograph, like his portrait in Gryffindor. I was ten. I need somebody to blame."

"And you chose me." It wasn't a question.

"My family's falling into bloody pieces, Harry."

"I've noticed Percy-"

Her eyes snapped open. "Honestly, if I heard that boy got himself killed taking on a Death Eater den all by himself I wouldn't be surprised in the least. He's driven himself bloody mad with guilt. And the twins don't prank anymore at school. Pranking was their lives. And Charlie and Bill, they've flung themselves into work. And I was home, so I was there for Mum and Dad bursting into bloody tears every fifteen minutes!" She wiped at her eyes furiously.

"And you, Gin," he said, voice far too gentle for her to be angry at him. "You blamed me."

"Hero of the bloody wizarding world." She grimaced at the look on his face. "Yeah, I know you don't buy into that garbage. And I know you couldn't do anything about Ron, 'cept maybe write to me afterwards and make me feel a little better about the whole thing."

Harry crossed his arms over his chest. "Then why blame me?"

"I didn't say it was reasonable. Why did Malfoy pick a seven-year rivalry with you? Because you befriended a Weasley on the train. Why does everybody consider you a hero? Because of an accident you had no control over. Why is my brother dead? Because an animagus decided our family looked like a good one to hide out with. There's no such thing as a good reason for anything!"

He held his hand out to her. "You needed someone to hate when you were ten, Gin, but now you're eleven. Could we be friends, this time around? Instead of just ignoring each other until fifth year?"

Ginny forced a smile through the tears. "It doesn't work that way. You can't just walk up to someone, say 'Let's be friends,' and have it work all of the sudden."

Harry returned the smile, though on him it was heartfelt. "Well, we'll be the exception to the rule, then."

She'd forgotten how wonderfully ridiculous he could be, but still… "I don't know, Harry. I really don't know."

* * *

Werewolves were refused jobs, places to live, basic respect. Werewolves were beholden to men like Severus for potions to control their changes. Werewolves were treated as automatically dark.

Which was why Remus having a casual cup of tea with Juliet Weasley, leader of the werewolf rights movement and another of the seemingly never-ending Weasley cousins, in a small Muggle cafe by the river, without so much as raising their voices to the sweet young waitress, would have immediately earned the suspicion of some of Britain's best Aurors.

That they were plotting a revolution was completely besides the point, really.

"You would of been in my year if you went to Hogwarts," Remus said, for she was certainly one of the older Weasley cousins. "I didn't know there were more of us around."  
She shrugged, red curls bouncing with the movement. He wondered if she was red-haired and curly even as a wolf. "Not at Hogwarts, no. I attended Durmstrang. A school that cares so little for its students safety and trains them in the Dark Arts saw no issue with accepting quite a few werewolves over the years. Did you know Greyback attended Durmstrang?"

Remus choked on his tea. "Really?" he said weakly, wiping at his mouth. Greyback had been the werewolf who turned him, when he was just a child. He hated the bastard.

"Not during my time, of course, but I heard quite a bit about him. He killed or bit quite a few student. If Durmstrang were Hogwarts, they would never have accepted another werewolf again, but instead, they treated it as a training exercise." She sipped at her tea, oddly calm for the story she told. "Meant when I started, I had to fight to survive, and it's no different here."

"I… see. Juliet, I won't participate in anything immoral to get my rights. Being able to work isn't worth going against my principles, and it's not going to change the attitudes against us if we take what we want by violence."

She smiled. "I'd never ask that of you. No, what makes you especially valuable to our cause is that you're proof, of what we can be. Hogwarts professor, mentor to the Boy-Who-Lived, member of the Order of the Phoenix, shacking it up with an Auror-"

"Er, I'd appreciate it if you don't mention that one while extolling my virtues," Remus interrupted, twisting his napkin between his fingers. "We aren't together yet, in this world." Preferably ever, if he had his say. He'd told Tonks that he was too old for her, too dangerous, too, but loved her too much to say no in the old world. And because of that, he'd wound up getting both of them killed. He wouldn't let it happen this time.

Juliet missed these unconveyed subtleties, only saying, "Fine. The Aurors never helped us out much, anyway, so she might have complicated things."

"Tonks fully supports werewolf rights," he growled.

She raised an eyebrow. "Are you quite done? I was only saying your relationship might cause trouble both in her work life and your activism with us, from people less understanding that the two of us."

"Of course. Sorry."  
"It's no trouble. I certainly understand the urge to protect one's love." Juliet gazed wistfully past Remus for a moment, before shaking herself out of it. "Auror girlfriend or not, you will serve well as an example on exactly how good we can be. You are proof, Remus Lupin, that we can integrate with wizards."

"And you, Juliet?" he asked. "If I am proof of integration, what are you proof of?"

She smirked at him. "Why, Mr. Lupin, what an absolutely impertinent question." She stood, throwing down a few muggle pounds. "But if you must know, why, then I think my tale of Durmstrang tells you enough." She swept out of the cafe, leaving Remus staring after her bemusedly.

* * *

Severus Snape made a habit of reading the papers daily. Most of their contents were total bunk, of course, but at least he could keep track of the opinions of grievously uncultured dolts, who some days seemed to be the only people with power in the world.

He also made a habit of drinking pumpkin juice daily. Many poisons blended well with it, yes, but so did most healing potions. He'd had a sore throat for the last couple days, and even wizards couldn't make a cough syrup that actually tasted good.

These two factors combined into a spit-take that drenched his food in pumpkin juice. He sat there, staring, dead-eyed, at the Daily Prophet, as the Great Hall silenced and the few students who actually kept up with the news passed their papers to their neighbors, watching the head table avidly.

"Severus?" Minerva asked, leaning over to read the headline. Vincent Crabbe Murdered by Auror. She pressed a hand to her heart. "Oh."

"That's all you can say?" Severus said incredulously. "Oh? By Merlin, how did we not know he was killed? It was over a year ago!" A couple of his students were openly sobbing. Weak of them, really, but Slytherin had suffered so many losses last year that he supposed their ability to silently mourn had been used up.

He glanced at Albus, half-hoping the old fool would grant his students some dignity. "You are all dismissed to your common rooms. Classes are cancelled for the day while we process this new development." They filtered out, several shooting far-too-interested looks towards the head table, including the Potter boy and the Weasley with brains, but none of them were defiant enough to stay. Pity, that. Severus could use to take away some house points.

"Says here she didn't report it because she thought the Auror would turn themself in, and when that didn't happen, that the news would destroy her son's good name," Minerva said softly, passing the paper down to Irma. And the two thought they were discreet.

Severus closed his eyes. "They will. Potter is this country's golden boy, and look how quickly the school turned against him just for a little parseltongue in his old second year. No one is more gullible than a wizard."

"It's required for the magic," Filius said. "At least, that's my house's theory. Penelope Clearwater's addition to one of the Ravenclaw research folders shows how often wizards fall for scams compared to muggles. We all have to be people who believe in the impossible." He sighed. "Unfortunately, that lets us accept the improbable."

Severus couldn't always follow the Ravenclaw, but here the meaning was quite clear. He opened his eyes, though really he just wanted to go somewhere where he didn't have students to get emotionally attached to. "The press never does favor us. The Auror won't be prosecuted."

Minerva crossed her arms over her chest. "Unless we fight it. I said we'd work towards justice for all the Slytherin students, Severus. That includes Vincent Crabbe."

"We need to save the living first! Azkaban, Minerva, remember?" he snapped. "Child minds are more palpable than those of adults. They'll be absolutely broken in there, if they aren't already."

"You may not have any choice." He glared at Arabella Zabini, who didn't flinch under his gaze. He'd forgotten she and the other new teachers were here, to be honest. "On saving the living first. This article will enrage the public. It's too opinionated not to."

Amelia Bones nodded, scowling. "It'll take a miracle to find an unbiased jury. Everyone will take sides." She shot a glance at Gilderoy Lockhart, who hadn't yet spoken to anyone, expression set in a mimicry of intelligent thought.

Severus realized, with a dawning feeling of irritation, that it was the Horror at Hogwarts issue all over again. Whichever stance Gilderoy took, the world would take. "Such a terrible situation, terrible indeed," the author said, shaking his head sadly. Severus frowned as Gilderoy made no further declaration of a stance. Well, wasn't that interesting?

Before he could pry an answer out of the git, Amelia stood. "I still have contacts in the Ministry," she said, in answer to Severus's questioning look. "I can write Rufus and ask him exactly why this went unknown for so long." Her eyes flashed, dark and dangerous, and Severus was suddenly glad she was on their side.

Of course, when he looked back to Gilderoy, the poncy git had disappeared without a trace.


	7. Dearest Darlingest Mumsie and Popsickle

Sorry, people. I don't have any good excuses for the time gap.

Do not own.

* * *

Penny,

No one's caught me out yet. It's strange, trying to pass as pureblood. Sometimes I feel as though every word I say, every move I make, is scrutinized. I have a newfound appreciation for the calm of Hogwarts.

Dearest Penny, it's so Dark here. We are reminded, over and over, that every spell is a weapon. Lumos to blind, wingardium leviosa to smash, a healing spell twisted into a cruel mockery of itself. I asked Krum why, once. "Every tool is two. To hurt and to defend. And we're taught to use both sides, because even if the Dark Lord is gone, evil will rise again."

I hope he's wrong, but I can't help but remember the Dark Mark over the Great Hall.

Oliver

* * *

Dear Gran,

I suppose you've read the news. You always did say a proper Longbottom sought to alway stay informed.

I don't know how to feel. I know that's not right, that a Longbottom must always be certain in their convictions and equally able to graciously concede should they be wrong, but I've always lacked certainty, Gran. I think I just have to accept it and adapt.

You've told me often I should not hate those in Azkaban, the Lestranges and Malfoys of the world, that they're being punished enough by the Dementors and the way we honor my parents' sacrifice is to continue living. I suppose you'd also say Vincent Crabbe has been punished enough for bullying me in school.

But he tortured people, Grand, last time around. I watched while he held Morag MacDougall under the Cruciatus Curse, and could do nothing to stop him. He was a monster, really. I would have loved to see his seventeen-year-old self in Azkaban. But his eleven-year-old self dead? I can say with a straight face that the Auror who killed him deserves prosecution, but I can't say it's because Crabbe was a nice person. I can't lie like that, Gran.

I suppose that there is the Longbottom conviction showing through, isn't it? Only not in the way you expected.

Not much else special is going on, honestly. Our new Herbology teacher is absolutely wonderful. She's Blaise Zabini's mother, and was probably a Slytherin when she attended Hogwarts, but doesn't seem to have any anti-Muggleborn prejudice, not like Professor Snape. She doesn't talk about her son, and so far no one has been stupid enough to ask.

But she grew a blood rose, Gran. She has the skill. I wish we hadn't had to lose Professor Sprout to get her, but at least we still have a good teacher. History of Magic has improved too, because of Susan's aunt.

So things aren't great, but they aren't the mess they were last year. Even the Crabbe thing didn't really happen this year. We just didn't find out until now. Maybe this year will be better, Gran.

Love, Neville.

* * *

Theodore,

I heard. Suppose it doesn't matter now if I tell you he died last time, too. An accident. Would of got me and Draco too if it weren't for Potter. Don't know why he bothered.

The Death Eater imprisoned, the dead still dead. I'm the only one left. Suppose that's destiny, maybe. Glad you didn't forget me.

Gregory.

* * *

Ginny, dear,

I really do wish you'd write more. You've become so withdrawn, sweetheart, and it's just not like you.

I heard about the dreadful incident with the poor Crabbe boy. Aurors are supposed to be trustworthy. Was he a friend of yours, the poor dear? In the old world, I mean? The latest article says how sweet of a boy he was.

How are your brothers faring? I can't get them to write often, either, and I worry so much about them.

I've sent cookies with the letter. Please write back, Ginny.

Love, Mum

* * *

Dear Prophet,

I must say, I can't see what all the fuss is about. Yes, there was an accident, but we all know and trust our Aurors, right? There wouldn't have been an accident if Death Eaters didn't so outnumber the good among us.

Perhaps the Aurors should take members of the Life Eternal along with them on their raids, if not having enough numbers is resulting in accidents like the death of Mr. Crabbe. At least the child was a Slytherin, in the old world. It is, of course, sad that he was killed instead of being adopted into a proper family and retrained, but it is possible he was irredeemable.

I am a proud member of the Life Eternal and know soon our leader will release a statement supporting our Aurors.

Sincerely, Meredith Diggory

* * *

Dear the woman who defined scandal and the man whose name is feared,

What side, exactly, am I meant to support here? My fans are waiting for my word, and few will argue with whatever it is I chose to say, but I dare not presume as to which words will best support your plan. My soldiers currently are rather against Mr. Crabbe, given his Death Eater connections. The longer I wait, the more their opinion will be set in stone. Not to say there is any rush, of course, or that I couldn't change said stone opinion, but I can more readily assist your goals if you are willing to tell me your plans.

Sincerely, the magnificent man with the perfect teeth

* * *

Dear Blaise,

If I were brave, I'd lay this letter upon your grave, or rather, the spot in the gardens where the few ashes I was given were buried. I would not fear an intrepid traveler escaping the Blossoming Mugwump and pleasing the Acer Igniferous reading this letter under the light of the full moon. I would not fear an ill wind snatching up my parchment and carrying it to my enemy's eyes. I would not fear a bird telling tall tales to any who would listen.

But I am not brave, I do so fear, and this letter will burn.

I hope you somehow read it anyway, wherever in the cosmos your beautiful soul burns.

I'm getting closer to justice, I swear. No, I haven't made a move yet. If I make an attempt on Gilderoy Lockhart's life and fail, I may never get the chance again, and if I go to prison, I may never catch the Death Eaters who killed you. The man who failed to save you is important, but not as important as them.

Unfortunately, it's obvious the Aurors in this country have less brains than the average rock. Another of your once classmates is dead, though I'm sure you already knew, and they've given me absolutely no leads as to the identities of your killers. I'm thinking of paying a visit to some of the women who've married Death Eaters currently in prison. I do, after all, know exactly how cruel my sex can be.

Gilderoy, on the other hand, will be quite easy to kill once the opportunity comes to do so without getting caught. The man can barely identify carnivorous plants. I'm starting to suspect his books are the most exquisite falsehoods. If he had not wronged you so, I could almost admire him.

I met the Ravenclaw girl you spoke of so fondly in the old world. Quite shy, isn't she? Don't worry, I see no point in terrifying her now that you're no longer in any position to act upon your infatuation. Odd, though. She won't look me in the eye. Any idea what that's about?

Your grieving mother

* * *

Dear Mum,

The Department's a right mess. Apparently, even Scrimgeour doesn't know who killed the Crabbe kid, 'cause he's looking through all records on who was involved in the Crabbe raid. Trouble is the paperwork seems to have disappeared. At least me and Moody aren't under suspicion, because he wasn't local and I was still in general training when everything went to bloody hell.

Doesn't mean it hasn't affected us, though. We had to break up a riot in Diagon Alley yesterday. I'm still not sure what they were protesting, 'cause some called us baby killers and others said they were on our side. News has even spread to Azkaban of all places. Death Eaters said we were making their cause look good. I thought about pointing out they tried to kill a one-year-old when we'd killed an eleven-year-old, and then realized the absurdity of the entire discussion.

Mum, I could deal with the negativity if the department itself agreed the culprit was wrong. But I can hear the whispers in the break room. Pity it had to be a kid, but he was Slytherin. They all go bad in the end. He wasn't a Death Eater, but give him time. Kid was too stupid to live. Good that we didn't let that trojan horse into our school. (Mum? What's a trojan horse? Is it a slur against Slytherins, Death Eaters, or the dim-witted?)

Mum… Be careful, please. I heard about the Life Eternal breaking into your house, even though you didn't tell me. There's a lot of anti-Slytherin prejudice out there right now, and you would not believe how many members of the Life Eternal we've arrested trying to break into suspected Death Eaters' homes to enact vigilante justice. It's almost as though someone out there wants us divided.

Love, Tonks (not Nymphadora!)


	8. This is not a Dream, my Friend

Do not own. Apologies for being flaky.

* * *

Percy heard her before he saw her. "Well, it's obvious, isn't it?" she said, her voice carrying none of the superiority normally expected with those words.

The listener huffed. "Enlighten us, Loony Lovegood." Percy ducked behind a suit of armor. Not that he normally had any trouble facing Penelope. They'd achieved a sort of awkward coexistence so long as neither looked at the other for too long. But he'd last heard that disdain from her in the old world, when he'd abandoned his family to the ministry, and now she directed it at an eleven-year-old.

"Wrackspurts," Luna said. "Wrackspurts are confusing the protestors. Really, all they want is a guarantee of safety, but the Wrackspurts don't want them to be safe because then they can't infect them. So they make the protesters protest things like Vincent's death or the prosecution of the Auror who killed him, instead of protesting the world's lack of basic safety precautions."

Percy tried to puzzle that through. He wasn't a Ravenclaw, but he was still fairly certain that made absolutely no sense. Not that he didn't want a guarantee of safety. No, the most wonderful thing in the world would be to know his brothers and sister were finally safe. But what people were protesting, on either side, was not being safe in their daily lives. Unless that was what Luna meant? No, that was like when he had too much Firewhiskey in the old world and tried to read divine portents in the ingredients label. He'd become quite the drunk after he realized how badly he screwed up, in the old world.

He was so busy trying to figure out what Luna meant he nearly missed what Penelope said in reply. "That's what I thought you'd say. Really, Loony, don't you think you're a little too old to be believing in the boogeyman?"

"Oh, the boogeyman isn't real," she said. "And my belief is what keeps me safe from the Wrackspurts. You infected Percy with them, you know." In his hiding place, Percy blushed. He'd completely forgot that ridiculous assertion.

Penelope sighed. "Sometimes I wonder how you even ended up in Ravenclaw."

The silence hung taut, the knife suspended high. She didn't, Percy thought. He didn't know about Ravenclaw, not for certain, but in Gryffindor casting aspersions on whether someone belonged in their house was tantamount to calling them… not a coward, not really, because one could recover from a moment of cowardice. Some of the truest Gryffindors had been cowards at heart who were brave when it was most necessary.

No, the hurt from the insult wasn't because of any traits it implied, though yes, it did imply cowardice in Gryffindor. The insult marked one as an outsider, who could never hope to understand nor gain friends within the house. The insulters didn't understand. Of course they didn't. His brothers belonged.

But he never had.

Percy stepped out from behind the suit of armor. "Penelope," he said, staring at both his ex-girlfriend and the girl who as far as he knew, had never done her any wrong.

"Oh, look, you have less wrackspurts now," Luna said, smiling vacantly. He didn't miss the glimmer in her eyes, though.

Penelope met Percy's gaze. "Luna, leave us alone."

"No," Percy said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I think she should understand exactly how bloody insensitive you're being, or have you forgotten? Have you forgotten all the times you found me in the library, Penelope, reading up on why the Sorting Hat decides what it does, tearing myself apart trying to figure out how to belong?"

At least she had the grace to look a little bit ashamed. "This is different. Your brothers were being immature. Luna needs to grow up."

A raw laugh tore itself from his throat. "Luna needs to grow up? I abandoned my family for the bloody Ministry!"

Luna sat on the windowsill, watching intently as Penelope said, "It's different. Luna just can't be bothered with the real world. You thought they didn't care about your ambitions."

"Exactly! Because I wasn't a real Gryffindor. Real Gryffindors want to be curse breakers and dragon-tamers and aurors and Quidditch players and, and, joke shop owners, not legislators!" He stepped closer, hands clenched at his side though he'd never even consider swinging. "When you already feel like a friendless outsider, Penelope, saying you don't even belong in your house, the one place where you're always supposed to belong…"

He took a shaky breath, and then another, as the words failed to come to him, for the times he'd sat alone in the library late at night drowning in the horribly empty feeling crushing his chest, rereading the same line over and over again so he didn't have to think. Because if he did think, he'd think about the Sorting. About a hat that told him his ambition would suit him well in Slytherin, and how he'd begged it not to do that to him. About Gryffindors that never spent hours on end reading up on the lack of jobs in the Ministry nowadays and who never were afraid of how no one offered a solution. About Gryffindors who never avoided the parties celebrating their brother's Quidditch wins in the fear that even under the influence of firewhiskey, they'd still be an outsider.

About Gryffindors who never thought their family might have been happier if they were never born. He'd tried everything he could to make them proud, in his own way. Top of the class. Prefect. Head boy. A rising superstar in the Ministry.

Perfect prefect Percy.

"Your wrackspurts are increasing again," Luna commented, hopping down from the windowsill. She undid her necklace of bottle caps and proffered it to Percy. "This will help. You need it more than I do."

"Er, thanks," he said, taking the necklace. He smiled at the butterbeer cork in the center and at the realization of exactly how ridiculous it looked.

Luna nodded sagely. "See, the wrackspurts are already leaving."

"Bloody ridiculous," Penelope muttered, turning away.

* * *

Harry stared at all the students crowding the stands around the Quidditch pitch. Even the teachers were present. "It might as well be a real Quidditch match," he said.

"Except we didn't get class off, which is why we had to hold it on a weekend, it's not going to affect the house cup, and Slytherin can't field a team," the girl besides him said. She frowned, carefully adding another pin to the golden scarf wrapping her hair. Harry supposed the scarf must be hard to keep on with Quidditch level winds, given she'd added so many pins it bristled like an irate hedgehog, which rather spoiled the Gryffindor spirit of the thing. She proffered her hand. "Eliza Ahmad. Seeker last year, and since Oliver left, I get to play as keeper this year."

He shook her hand. "Harry Potter. Are you good?" He couldn't really judge her strength as a seeker, given how much of a mess Quidditch last year had been.

She snorted. "Not really. I mostly do racing and agility, but seems I'm the best we've got for keeper for now, given Angelina doesn't want to deal with McLaggen's lip." She was quiet for a moment, watching the crowd. "I know a good keeper, but they're in Slytherin. I asked Angelina if we really needed to make the teams house- specific and she blew up on me."

"They've always been house-specific," Harry pointed out, deciding, probably wisely, that cringing at the idea of playing with a Slytherin would not be the strongest argument.

"Because the points always contributed to the House Cup. If they don't, then there's no reason not to accept the few Slytherins left who can play, and play well, onto the teams." She shrugged. "Just a thought. Ready to fly?"

"I've been waiting for this for over a year," Harry answered, as his team took flight against the Ravenclaws. (Neville had steadfastly refused to pick a team to root for, much to both Harry and Hermione's dismay.)

Harry had returned to the air, to Quidditch, and as he swooped through the air scanning the sky for the snitch, he remembered what he'd loved so much about it. Here, he had control and ability, whereas in everything but defense in school he had neither. Here he could win for himself. He groaned as he heard a cheer from the Ravenclaw side. Well, he could as long as Eliza stopped letting the Quaffle in. He half-wondered if she was playing deliberately worse to give this Slytherin keeper friend a chance.

At least Ravenclaw was too cultured to sing a version of Weasley is our King with Ahmad substituted in. On the other hand, he was sure they were composing sonnets or haikus or whatever fancy intellectuals used to insult people. Obviously they had to finish the game before the Ravenclaw minds figured out the correct number of syllables to say Ahmad couldn't catch. Not that the witch seemed particularly flustered, but he was sure the rest of his team would be. This wasn't a pick-up game, this was serious. Gryffindor pride was at stake! (Sometimes, in the dark of his room when everyone else was sleeping and so he was sure no one could hear him thinking such traitorous thoughts, Harry admitted he might be slightly too serious about Quidditch. He blamed all the years with Wood.)

The wind was bad today, tugging his broom every which way if he didn't focus, so he flew with the wind instead of against it. It gave him an extra boost of speed, and the snitch wasn't likely to fight the gales either. The only restriction was that it had to stay in the stadium.

So when then snitch danced low over the Ravenclaw stands, weaving nearly among the students, Harry swooped after it, flying so fast and close his wake ruffled the watchers' hair.

He didn't expect Hermione to stand up.

* * *

Astoria was still chuckling by the day after the Quidditch match. The Mudblood and Potter hadn't suffered any permanent injuries, sadly, but the look on Potter's face when he realized he'd not only plowed into his best friend, he'd given Ravenclaw the match, was priceless. The only boring bit was when the teachers took absolutely forever to decide whether Granger catching the snitch when she fell counted as a win for Ravenclaw, since she wasn't on the team. The way her house insisted on carrying her on her shoulders on the way out of the stadium was answer enough, really. Pity the Mudblood had to be exalted so, but at least Potter took an ego hit. The Ravenclaws had composed a haiku commemorating it.

 _Potter planned poorly_

 _When the golden snitch dove to_

 _Hermione's hands._

Ravenclaws were so cultured about their insults.

And there was a cruel, excited streak to her mirth, too. Today was the first Junior Life Eternal meeting. It was her first chance to learn how to avenge her sister.

Unfortunately, she and the Weasel were the only ones who showed up. Lockhart's grin faltered. "Er, everyone must be sleeping off the Quidditch excitement."

"Actually," the Weasel said, "I believe they think this will resemble the dueling club you ran last time, Professor." He paused, then rather unnecessarily, said, "The one where a student nealy died."

Lockhart swallowed. "Oh, yes, Percy, is it?" The Weasel nodded stiffly. "You were one of the lads I rescued after the Halloween incident?"

That bloody bastard had lived when her sister hadn't? (Well, obviously he'd lived since he was sitting right there, but he'd been saved?) Sometimes the world had no justice.

The Weasel frowned. "I don't recall much rescuing happening. But if the Life Eternal gives me a chance to find justice for my brother, then it's the right path for me to take, Professor."

That's right, the younger Weasel had died, hadn't he? Astoria hadn't paid too much attention, since her future husband had also been arrested. It'd been a great boom to the family for her to marry a Malfoy; her disappointed mother quickly arranged an engagement with Vincent Crabbe. They should have known something was wrong when his mother never contacted them back after the initial deal. If this kept up, she'd have Arabella Zabini's reputation.

"Ah, yes, of course." He attempted a rousing smile. "Who is the enemy?"

After a long silence, the Weasel glanced at Astoria. Before he could spout off with his overly diffident comments once again, she suggested tentatively, "Death Eaters?"

"Wrong!" Lockhart said, spinning about theatrically. That was unnecessary. "They are but a symptom of a larger disease! That disease is Muggle phobia!"

"Professor?" said the Weasel. Only a prefect could make that word a question, Astoria thought smugly, though he wasn't wearing a badge.

"Anyone could be a Death Eater, Percy! Anyone!" He pointed at the boy shakily. "Have you ever spoken to a Muggle?"

"No, but-"

Lockhart whirled and cast "Incendio" on his desk. The flames blossomed bright, consuming the wood, and the Weasel took a hasty step back, pushing Astoria behind him. She would be angry about the presumption later.

Now, she was too frozen to react. The flames licked over the wood, painting it in swirls of black charcoal and white ash that crumbled broke smoked like the stories from Halloween-

"Look at yourselves! Wizards are afraid of fire for no reason-"

"Aguamenti," Percy snapped, and the fire extinguished under the deluge from his wand. "Are you bloody insane? Her sister was burned to death!"

"Flame-freezing charms-"

"Don't do much when you're already on fire! Are you going to claim I can avoid being Avada Kedrava'd like my brother through wishful thinking too?" His hands fisted at his sides, and Astoria wondered for a moment if he would outright punch Lockhart.

Lockhart seemed to wonder that too, given how quick he was to apologize.

Then a white light flashed through Astoria's consciousness, and she dimly heard, "Obliviate."

Unfortunately, she and the Weasel were the only ones who showed up to Lockhart's Junior Life Eternal Meeting. And… "What happened to your desk?" Astoria asked. It was a crumbled, charred mess.

Lockhart waved a hand dismissively. "Professor Zabini brought by an absolutely lovely Acer Igniferous clipping, and unfortunately, it lived up to its name. If I didn't know better, I'd say she had it out for me."

* * *

Tonks figured out why the other aurors distanced themselves from her about the same time as when she and Moody were requested to publically serve as Fudge's bodyguards.

"It's representation, see?" Fudge said, nervously finger-combing his hair. "The Auror who hates the Death Eaters, despite his Durmstrang education, and his half-blood trainee who provides reassurance to those less than light because-"

"Because of my relatives, Death Eaters and Slytherins," Tonks said as the realization hit her.

Fudge beamed, not realizing the wound in the words. "Exactly," he said. "Both the Life Eternal and those of, say, a different persuasion will be appeased."

And that was why the other Aurors avoided her, wasn't it? They thought she, and perhaps Moody too, were near-Dark. They thought her relatives might make her sympathise with people like the Crabbe boy and his family. They thought she sympathised with people who'd be happy to spit on her blood traitor grave.

But she did sympathise, didn't she? Aurors were not meant to kill, ever if it could be avoided. She didn't know if it could be with the Crabbe boy, but they should have at least tried.

The child killed could have just as easily been a younger version of her mother, who would grow up to cheer for Muggleborn rights.

"Excuse me, sir?" she said. "But what are you actually planning to do to resolve the Crabbe case?"

Fudge paled. "Do? Why, whatever do you mean, my dear?"

"What I mean," Tonks said, "Is have you made any actual effort to figure out who fired the Bone-breaker Curse and killed a child, and once you figure them out, how will you discipline them?"

"Er…" he said. "That's Scrimgeour's job-"

"Constant vigilance!" Moody snapped, and Fudge jumped about three feet in the air. The auror grinned, and actually winked at Tonks. Well, allies were to be found in the most unusual of places.

"I'll have you know-" Fudge met Moody's gaze and quite wisely shut up.


	9. Such A Fine Line Between A Good Man

The snow fell steadily in Diagon Alley while the cold drained Colin's camera battery like no tomorrow. He hurried through the streets, his mother close behind him, dodging taller shoppers with ease.

Normally, he didn't visit Diagon Alley during the winter holidays, but he accidentally knocked his entire bookbag of supplies into his potion cauldron last week. The explosion forced the Slytherins to bunk in the Room of Requirement until term ended, because the house elves were still excavating their dungeons. Professor Snape was livid, especially since Colin couldn't keep from giggling at his lack of eyebrows. He wouldn't get out of detention until he graduated, at this rate.

So he needed to go shopping. His mother sighed as they plodded through the snow. "How clumsy do you have to be to destroy your entire stock of supplies in one fell swoop- what in the world is going on over there?"

'Over there' gathered a group of witches and wizards carrying signs. Colin snapped a quick picture, because why not, before reading the signs. Not Our Minister, Aurors Have To Answer, and Let Lockhart Lead numbered among them, along with one sign held by a particularly confused witch proclaiming Down With Fudge, Up With Taffy! 

Colin swallowed nervously. "Protests, Mum. We should just go around them."

Her grip tightened on his hand. "Colin, I thought you said after your father and I talked to you about going on the run in the dream world that you'd stop hiding things from us."

They'd been furious, both in the dream and now. "I didn't think it'd affect us." He tugged on her hand. "Come on."

One of the wizards scowled at them. "You should be marching with us, boy. Fudge won't protect Muggles like your dear mother there."

A witch's hand inched towards her wand. "You're a Mudblood-lover? I thought you marched for justice for the Crabbe boy."

He sneered. "That dark bit of scum? He deserved to suffer more-"

"I'm friends with his mother, arse!" She drew her wand.

"We'll just be going now," Colin squeaked, all but dragging his mother away from the scene. He caught the flashes of curse-light out of the corner of his eye.

The glare his mother levelled on him was positively painful. "Not going to affect us?" she said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

He winced. "I didn't realize it was so bad."

* * *

Minister Legitimizes House Elf Liberation Party, or HELP, in Historic Move

By Marcus Weasley

Today, I braved the snows to watch Minister Fudge present Dobby the Elf, face of the freedom movement, with a beautifully knit merino hat bought from Australia. The elf accepted the gift gravely, and so was freed.

Has Minister Fudge thus cemented his position as a champion of freedom? Opinions are mixed.

"Took him long enough," said Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived and savior of the Wizarding World, along with strong champion of house elf rights. "He confiscated Dobby from the Malfoys over a year ago, and knew the whole time Dobby wanted freedom. He's only finally doing what's right."

Meredith Diggory, a pillar of the community and an advocate for safer schools, has a different opinion. "What's next? Will he allow centaurs access to our women? They're not like us, and I don't understand why people can't see that."

Few reporters, however, thought to ask the newly-freed elf his opinion. Dobby the house elf was freed in the dream world, and proceeded to save the Boy-Who-Lived's life, so surely he has something wise to say?

"I be thinking freedom is good, but I not stupid," he informed me sagely. "Minister Fudge not be caring about me. Minister Fudge be caring about his job."

Wise words, Dobby, wise words. And what is the state of Fudge's job? In the dream, when he was deemed unfit, Rufus Scrimgeour replaced him, but the head Auror still has not fully investigated the death of Vincent Crabbe, and so some may doubt his ability to lead fairly. Of course, as Scrimgeour's boss, this does not help Fudge's position.

Even those who believe Vincent Crabbe got exactly what he deserved still doubt Fudge's ability to lead, as last weekend's protests showed. Overall, the Aurors had to arrest twenty wizards and send another forty to St. Mungo's hospital, including three children who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The political situation currently resembles a lit Fizzing Wizzbang, and we don't know how long we have until it explodes.

Despite doubt from some members of the community, though, the freeing of Dobby the Elf seems to have quelled some doubts. "At least I know he's looking out for someone besides himself," said Molly Weasley, a house-wife with close ties to the Boy-Who-Lived. "That's better than nothing, right?"

However, the most important question still has yet to be answered. At one of the recent anti-Fudge protests, a young woman bore a sign proclaiming Down With Fudge, Up With Taffy! "Far tougher than Fudge," she said, "And better-tasting besides." Who is this mysterious Taffy and is he perhaps better suited to the current position than our current minister? Do we have a new infiltration of cannibals into the Wizarding World? Is there a plot to eat our Minister? Look in the Daily Prophet next week for the exclusive!

* * *

"Is there a plot to eat our Minister?" Juliet mocked under her breath. "Knowing the sensationalist idiots running the Prophet, they'll blame werewolves next."

Remus sipped at his tea. "Aren't you related to some of those idiots?" he asked, glancing about the Muggle cafe yet again, though he'd not seen a single wizard in all the times he'd met Juliet here, excepting them, of course.

She snorted. "Exactly my point. But the freeing of the elf is an opportunity."

"Are you sure?" he asked. "They don't present nearly the danger to human witches and wizards we do."  
"You're joking, right?" Juliet said. "Durmstrang had house elves, though there we called them domovoi. They aren't as subservient as your elves, though. Should they be abused, they abuse back."

Remus frowned. "But-"

"It depended on the magnitude of the offense, of course. Sloppyness meant a few bruises. Cruelty, well…" She shrugged. "Once, my roommate's eyes and mouth were sewn shut in the night."

Remus set his mug down into the saucer with a heavy clatter, trying to ignore the shaking of his hand. "The domovoi was not punished?"

Juliet shrugged. "My roommate learned not to raise a hand against a domovoi," she said. "The domovoi continued on. It was, after all, tending the castle without pay."

"Right," said Remus, lacing his fingers together. He remembered all the cruelties Sirius had shown Kreacher, and shuddered.

"See," said Juliet, with a smile. "If you, a werewolf, can fear an elf, who's to say wizards won't, either?"

He had to get home to Harry soon, who was home for Christmas break. Sirius was baby-sitting, and while his friend had been greatly helped by his therapy, he still wasn't entirely stable. Still, he said, "But British elves follow different rules than domovoi. What elf will risk their freedom over a fight?"

"Why, Remus, you misunderstand. Present you, innocent werewolf who fought against Voldemort and only wants anti-discrimination laws, against the Pensieve memory of my mutilated roommate, and the conclusion will be obvious."

He grimaced. "You assume wizards won't instead move against domovoi. If they change the laws in fear... We need to earn this through peace."

She leaned forward, and the rickety table tilted. "Don't you think we've tried that?"

"I think preying on wizards' fears will only earn us more hatred. We can't stoop to their level, and we can't stab other magical creatures in the back to earn our own rights." He smiled grimly. "Unless you're not worried about shielding yourself from a domovoi in the night?"

Juliet sighed, then unexpectedly dropped her head into her arms. "Perhaps you're right. I'm just tired of not being treated as a person."

"We'll get there someday," Remus said, though he didn't know, he couldn't know. He had to believe in the world eventually becoming right. If he didn't, what was there to believe in?

* * *

The day she got back from the holiday break, Hermione went down to the kitchens to have a little chat with some folk whose opinions she'd sorely neglected.

See, she'd done some research over the holiday. There'd been a few cultures where what amounted to temporary slavery had been chosen by the slave, most notably to fulfil debts or… she blushed. Some communities of people with strange, at least to her, interests.

Still, an entire subcategory of beings making the choice to serve wizards… even dogs would bite if one mistreated them.

She accepted the tea the head house-elf of the kitchen, Perry, pressed in her hands. Hogwarts elves were free now, and though she wasn't nearly so naive as to think the fight done- perhaps it would never be done- she felt more ethical now in accepting their help. "Perry?"

"Yes, Miss?" The elf had modified the sock Dumbledore gave her into an elaborate head-scarf covered in dancing kneazles. It really was quite distracting.

"What makes you happy?"

Perry paused, and regarded her shrewdly. "Me, miss, or house elves in general?"

Hermione opened her mouth, then stopped. "I wouldn't want someone to have me speak for all muggle-borns, or rather to generalize Colin Creevy's experience with mine. Please, Perry, tell me about yourself."

Perry wandered away to check the ovens. "Well, miss, I just became a grandmother last week. I'm rather excited to present the boy with his first kneazle."

"His first…?"

"Kneazle, miss. I breed electric blue show kneazles. Lovely creatures, even though they do generate the most terrible localized lightning storms. Not too horrible a problem before electricity, but last time we had a global kneazle convention the storm took out the electrical for most of the eastern United States."

Hermione blinked. "I see."

Perry glanced at Hermione out of the corner of her eye. "Don't think I don't appreciate freedom, ma'am. Dumbledore didn't mind my attending the convention in the least, but there are other masters who aren't so kind. We aren't all able to pursue our interests. The movement gives us is freedom of choice."

"About that," Hermione said. "Why do some elves reject freedom, in your opinion? Maybe it'd help if I understood, even a little."

Perry shrugged, even as she pulled a ham out of one of the ovens. "How many decisions did you make when you were but a child, Miss? Anything important, or nothing more than what toy to play with?"

"I suppose nothing very important, because my parents would take care of anything truly important." She pressed a hand to her lips. "Are you saying…?"

"It might be a factor affecting the decision for some, Miss. There's a mix of people in this world, from the ones who will chose freedom even if they suffer for it, to those who seek safety above all else. Choosing between a bad master or the ability to feed one's children? I think I'd chose the master rather than see my kin starve, especially when it doesn't require a decision, only a… continuation."

Hermione sipped at her tea now that it'd cooled enough she could do so without burning the roof of her mouth. "But surely jobs are an option."

Perry snorted. "Only if someone's willing to hire. I'm lucky here at Hogwarts in that I'm not locked out of a paying job due to my species, but should I wish to become, say, a ministry politician…" She trailed off.

Hermione closed her eyes. "My grandmother didn't march with the suffragettes, though they were of her time," she said. "I asked her, while I was home for the holidays, to tell me why. She was locked out of so much simply due to her gender." Hermione hesitated. "She said she feared angering her husband, because though he was a good man, and she trusted him, he had legal control over her children, her money. She would be destitute and broken if he so chose. Safety was more important to her than freedom."

Perry regarded her, unblinkingly. "Do you judge her, for that?"

Hermione laughed, bitterly. "How can I, she who has made the effort to be the model Muggleborn? Racists can use the tiniest mistake in my classes as a reason why I don't belong, and by extension, everyone else like me. I can't slip up, not even once."


	10. You're Just Nice

_... So I just realized I've been alternatively referring to Lockhart's group as the Life Eternal or Light Eternal. I've been forgetting what I called it, which is ridiculously stupid, given I came up with the group. For now, in this chapter, it'll be the Light Eternal, because it's what I wrote more often, and before I post the next chapter I'll update this and the earlier chapters with whatever name of the two I choose- Life Eternal is what I started with, because it stands in direct opposition to Death Eaters on the surface level, but when you look at it more critically, they mean the same thing, but Light Eternal also stands in opposition to dark wizards. It doesn't have the cool alternate meaning, though..._

 _Edit: I'm going with the Life Eternal. I did back edits, but it's still possible I missed a couple, so please let me know if I did. Stupid autopilot brain._

 _Oh, and don't own. Chapter title is from The Last Midnight in Into the Woods._

* * *

Lockhart checked his hair in the mirror again nervously, waiting for the students to arrive for the next Junior Life Eternal Meeting. They'd gone quite well recently, growing in attendance each successive time, but he still remembered that disastrous first meeting. Thankfully, the Weasel and Greengrass didn't. The Dark Lord was not forgiving of mistakes. More relevant to him at the moment, neither was Rita.

He put on his best smile and opened the door to the classroom. "Mr. Weasley, Miss Greengrass, good, ah, I see you liked your last meeting," he said as the students trickled past him. "McMillan, Finch-Fletchy. Of course you've made near every meeting, Misses Edgecombe and Chang, and, oh, I don't believe I know your name?"

The blonde witch with a Ravenclaw pin on her lapel ducked her head. "Morag MacDougall, sir," she said, cheeks flushing red. Gilderoy was proud of how often he had that effect on women- no other man had his natural charm.

MacDougall, MacDougall… No, he could not remember her, from either this time or before. She must be a person of little consequence, then, but every single person joining offered a further sundering of the wizarding world. "Come on in, then, Miss MacDougall. I assure you you'll find us quite welcoming to newcomers."

He continued in this vein, greeting and naming until the thirty or so students who'd waited outside filed in. As he finished with the last, ("And Mr. Diggory, I'm glad to see your mother allowed you to return to Hogwarts because of little old me,") he cast about frantically for a subject of discussion. Lockhart believed lesson plans were for other people.

He was such a skilled storyteller he didn't need them. (Unless he actually intended the students to learn, obviously.) He sat atop the desks and regarded the students, most of whom were leaning forward attentively already. The club wasn't yet at the point where the true converts were dragging along their uninterested friends, after all.

"There is a war coming," Lockhart said, slipping into his storyteller voice. "A war between good and evil. Some will, of course, sit back and ignore the world falling apart around them, as some always do. Some will take the wrong side, when finally they chose. Some will advocate soft punishment of those who chose wrong." Some will, in short, offer the possibility of reconciliation, and we can't have that, can we?

He hopped down from his desk. "Some will be stabbed in the back for their foolishness. We know last time went horribly wrong. Can anyone name someone who was allowed to walk free who shouldn't have?"

Finch-Fletchley tentatively raised a hand. "Walden Macnair."

Percy Weasley. "Bartemius Crouch Junior." Huh, Gilderoy didn't remember Rita updating him with that one. He'd thought that kid was dead. Maybe he didn't play much of a role in the war?

Marietta Edgecombe. "Lucius Malfoy."

Gilderoy smiled. "Yes, yes, and yes. Can anyone name someone who was arrested last time around who shouldn't have been?" Because giving the opposition time to speak was so much more effective than just talking over them.

Diggory glanced around at the classroom, then, with the sense of bloody justice his old man probably instilled in him, raised his hand. "Sirius Black."

Lockhart nodded to him. "Anyone else?" He smiled as the students glanced around at one another. "Come now, don't be shy."

Greengrass slowly raised her hand. "Sir?"

"Yes?" he said, as his smile grew.

"There isn't anyone else."

He nodded. "And yet we didn't name even a fraction of the criminals the Ministry missed. We didn't even mention the man Sirius Black took the fall for. One man, against hundreds." The room was so quiet he could hear the breathing of the children in the front row, and their eyes didn't leave his as he hopped down from his desk.

"Softness towards criminals is what enabled the rise of You-Know-Who in the old world, what enabled fear to raze the world. Here and now, we can afford to show no mercy."

The girl in the back of the room, the new one whose name he'd already forgotten, raised her hand. "Does that mean you endorse the attacks on dark witches and wizards by agents of the Life Eternal?" she asked, so softly he had to concentrate to hear.

He laughed. "Listen to what you're saying, dear. Dark witches and wizards. They are of a culture which glorifies the old ways, death to those without magic and torturing squibs and muggleborns. I don't justify hunting them down without reason." After all, they were potential allies for Rita's end of things, and if he didn't outright endorse it their ranks wouldn't deplete too much, but enough would still die to polarized the rest. "They need to be watched, though. Do you think they will look kindly upon us should we show weakness? Perhaps they will temper their attacks? No, we need to strike before they can."

Greengrass, who'd initially been one of the easiest to fall in line, leveled her gaze at Gilderoy. "Even at Vincent Crabbe?"

Lockhart spread his hands wide, his mind racing. Greengrass could make the whole thing fall apart. "A horrible tragedy, of course. The Aurors present didn't take into account the presence of civilians. but nothing that could be done. His father needed to be captured. His father was a killer, a killer allowed to roam free who'd killed many more children than he lost that day. An accident happened, and that's not fair. Vincent's death wasn't right. No one's saying that." Besides a solid half of the Life Eternal, but that was besides the point. "I wonder if you forget that these men and women were led by a Dark wizard who tried to kill a baby?" Weasley looked away, and even Greengrass, who'd been about to defend the dark, fastidiously examined her fingernails. "I thought so. We cannot forget these people are the oppressors of muggleborns, of squibs, of muggles. These are the people who beat their house elves and despise the giants despite convincing the poor brutes to serve them."

He advanced, planting his hands on the central front desk, on Greengrass's desk. He could not allow them doubt. There were too many of them by now for his obliviate to catch them all, and so if he made a mistake, he had to fix it through good old-fashioned charm. "We are the champions of freedom. We cannot yield to the encroaching dark. If we do, it shall sweep over the land, subjugating all in its wake."

They were captivated, leaning forward ever so slightly in their seats, even the girl who'd initially questioned. He smiled, ever so sweetly. "And I hope it's clear, those who do not support us… well. Obviously, they're against us. Any questions?"

* * *

Irma Pince kept a diary, day in and day out, though some might call it silly when Pensieves existed. Nothing special, just a description of day to day life.

After all, pensieves could be found more easily than paper could, with the simplest of spells. They could be destroyed ever so easily, and even if they weren't, who could say wizards would always have the ability to use them?

Let it never be said Irma Pince was an optimist.

 _Perhaps history will vindicate us and the freed children will be heroes. Perhaps we will be mocked as fools centuries from now. Perhaps history will forget, one way or another, if there are even people alive to remember what we did._

 _But all we're trying to do is save a few lives. Is that too much to ask?_

 _Amelia Bones joined our little group today. Having an ex-judge on our side can't hurt. I don't remember the conversation word for word, of course, but something she said stood out to me. "If it were Susan, if she were in that hellhole, no matter what she'd done I wouldn't want her to face the dementors for it."_

 _Yes, we're fighting on two battlegrounds here. Unlawful imprisonment, the easier one to overturn, though I laugh when I say easy, and cruel and unusual punishment. In my deepest, darkest thoughts I will admit I don't believe even You-Know-Who deserves the dementors. Is that silly of me, to not wish torture upon a man who would happily cut me apart slowly, reveling in every moment of it?_

 _Probably._

 _Amelia thinks we can appeal to the court based on the children's age. I'm not so sure. Children have been sentenced to Azkaban before, in some of the darkest, earliest ages of wizarding society. The most recent record of such an incident was only sixty years ago. A girl of eight stealing bread from her master, doomed to lose her soul. Wizarding society has always been culturally somewhat behind, sad to say._

 _Sirius says he's ready to speak out when the time is right. What is the right time? We need to play thought and emotion as chords should we wish to harmonize._

 _Time is the enemy, but it is a sneaking, creeping, wily enemy, slipping through one's fingers at every turn, bristling with thorns that stab into your skin if you do catch it. The children must grow weaker, more damaged by the day, but should we act too hastily, they might slip from our fingers completely._

 _Severus thinks we're ready to go to court. He has found a law, obscure and from days long past, on phoenixes. A phoenix cannot be harmed for a crime a previous life committed, because each rebirth is a clean slate of sorts, a rebirth of personality and morality. They keep their memories throughout the centuries, but their rebirths allow them to adapt._

 _He thinks it has relevance. Bones agrees._

 _But she says we are still not ready, that we must be aware of every counter the court will throw at us. She says they will respond by pointing out a phoenix's behavior in one life is not necessarily predictive of their behavior in the next, whereas parts of this dream-prophecy have already come true._

 _"Do they think the children are somehow less likely to become murderers without souls?" Severus had spat._

 _"I agree with you, remember. We just need to ensure this will work. If we go before them and we fail, they won't rehear the case for another decade, at the very least. The Wizengamot does so hate having to do actual work."_

 _So we aren't going before the law, yet._

 _I hope if future generations are reading this somewhere, you have a less corrupt government than we do. I imagine a world where muggle and squib and wizard children share playgrounds and perhaps even schools, where muggleborn is only a word used to denote those who might need extra help understanding magic, where prisons are free of demons and libraries free of poltergeists, where goblins have wands and children respect books._

 _I know it won't happen, but it's a pleasant dream to fill one's mind at night._

* * *

In response to the knock on her door, Arabella hastily stowed her plans to slip a very uncomfortable contact poison into Lockhart's underwear drawer in her desk, and called, "Come in!" She pulled some essays into the center of her desk that looked like they could plausibly be Herbology homework.

Morag MacDougall slipped inside. "H-hello, P-professor-"

Arabella resisted the urge to strangle the girl. She knew she was at least semi-intelligent; she'd read her essays. "Spit it out, girl."

She ducked her head, her blond hair falling over her face, her voice dropping into an even softer whisper than before. "I… uh. I have a memory for you. You might be able to use it to get the Life Eternal- you probably don't care," she squeaked.

She spun to scurry out, but Arabella called out to her, "Wait!" She stopped, glancing Arabella from beneath the shield of her hair. "Why me?" Arabella asked, though inside she burned with cool fury.

Morag shrugged. "Blaise protected me from the worst of the torture, during that last year, even when I didn't return his crush." She smiled, ever so slightly. "He had to get that morality somewhere, and I know Dark Wizards aren't all bad."

Arabella's throat caught. "Did he die, in the old world? I… I lost contact with him in the last months." A non-Death Eater wizard, dark or no, had little power in the Dark Lord's new world.

She met Arabella's gaze. "I don't know. We were together in the end, fighting alone in the corridors, and we ran into ten or so Death Eaters. I died first, but…" she bit her lip. "I can share the memory with you, if you'd like. Both memories. You might be able to use the second to get Lockhart to talk the Life Eternal down a little."

Arabella swallowed. "Please."

She set up the pensieve in a daze, and they dove in together.

 _Fire. Fire and blood and so much noise. Arabella swallowed, and stepped carefully over a body. A child, like that she'd lost._

 _She watched Morag tug on her son's hand, her beautiful, kind son, who stared in shock at the dead child. "Blaise," the girl said. "She's dead."_

 _"That's Eleanor Nott," he said. "She's only a first year. She should of been evacuated."_

 _"I know. We have to wait to mourn."_

 _He finally moved, and Arabella and both now and memory Morag followed. "When did everything go so wrong?"_

 _"Down!" Morag called, and flung herself to the ground, pushing her son down with her. A flash of green light flew over her. "Death Eaters in front of us," she said, rather unnecessarily._

 _"We can't go back," her son said._

 _Blaise stood, and the girl with him. They nodded to one another. "Together, then." And they raced forth into the fight, sending bolts of red light into the dark ahead of them._

 _She watched, her heart in her throat, as the first two Death Eaters fell, as the cloaked men and women noticed the children. She watched as the green light flew, as the two barely dodged, as they struck down one more together. She watched as two bolts of light flew towards the girl, as her body arced backwards and the vision abruptly ended._

She had to take a moment to readjust, to not scream out her son's name, when they slipped out of the visions. Arabella closed her eyes. He'd always been a good person at heart. Better than her. And he'd had to die twice. "I see. Thank you for letting me know." Of both Professor Lockhart's oversight and her son's last days.

The girl left without saying goodbye. Arabella wasn't sure how much more of her stammering she could take, anyway.

She wanted to storm down to Lockhart's room right now and toss acid in his face. She was, however, rather aware of how profoundly bad an idea that would be, no matter how satisfying in the short term. She wouldn't have enough time to kill him before the alarm was raised, especially if she wanted him to suffer, as Blaise must have. And she didn't have enough evidence. The girl's memory could be twisted to hurt him, but not in any legally actionable way.

No, instead she'd have to be clever.


	11. I Ask Forgiveness For All The Things

You'd think with my chapters prewritten I could actually keep a schedule...

Don't own.

Oh, by the way, I'm pretty sure Arabella Zabini is Arabella in this story because I subconsciously took the name from Lightning on the Wave's Arc of Sacrifices (though not the badass Squib part). Great story, I recommend you read it if you haven't already.

* * *

Exclusive!

The Black Family Madness Strikes Again!

By Marcus Weasley

Sirius Black seen leaving a Muggle Ferret Pest's office this Friday! For those not in the know, Ferret Pests are alternatively long rodents that hunt rats, or people who treat madmen for their madness, similar to our mind healers but with elek-tricity. While I cannot explain muggle suspicions, it is of note that the Malfoy heir, Draco Malfoy, was turned into a ferret in the dream world. The Malfoy boy's Mother is one of the Blacks. The Blacks often go mad. Therefore, ferrets equal madness.

Therefore, the question of whether Sirus Black is consulting with ferrets or is merely mad is a moot one. The truth is, he must have finally succumbed to the family madness.

When asked for comment, Sirus Black responded, "What the bloody hell are you doing here? How did you find me?"

This reporter admits he was afraid as the madman stared at him with the face of death, but he bravely stood his ground. "Do you think your lineage contributed to your ferretuide?"

"What?"

"To your madness!" See, readers, he must be mad, for he does not understand the meaning of the ferret!

"No! Unless you count my cousin trying to kill me back in the war as my lineage! No, I'm going for a therapist (sic) because I was imprisoned in bloody Azkaban for ten years for a crime I didn't commit!"

"Whatever do you mean?"

He stepped close, and I feared for my life. "Do you have the faintest idea what Azkaban is like, boy? No. Of course you don't. It's cold, clammy, a land where only the dead belong. While you're there, you're not certain you aren't dead too. The only thing to tell you you're not is the pain when another inmate finds you, or don't you think Bellatrix can do damage without a knife, without a wand? Sometimes you see the kissed. Course, they can't hurt you. They can't hurt anyone ever again. You look in their blank eyes, little man, and tell me there's still hope in the world."

"You're scared to feel. Even a breath of happiness would bring them down on you. Even a breath. You know how many times you feel happy each day, reporter? Imagine, each of those times, burying it right away, destroying it, because the only way to survive is to lose emotion. When the dementors pass by, you feel your worst memories again and again, until you're not sure what's real and what's the prison. I'm still not entirely sure I'm out. Maybe this is what comes after death."

"Just think, little reporter man. I'm one of the saner ones, because I had an escape in the overwhelming desire to get revenge on Peter. But you and yours have locked up people who've lost everything, like my cousin, or do you honestly think Bellatrix Black will be crushed by Azkaban?"

He finally stepped away. "And you've locked children in there, and you think I'm the mad one."

He Disapparated.

* * *

Remus paused before the doors of Gringotts, steeling himself with a deep breath. To be honest, he didn't even know if they'd see him. As a werewolf, he couldn't have an account there.

But Juliet had been so optimistic in their last meeting. "I'd think if anyone would be in favor of togetherness in our cause it'd be you, Remus! What was that amusing quotation you told me? Something about how one person's Wingardium Leviosa can lift a feather, but a billion Leviosa's in concert can move a mountain?"

Besides, she and the others had just as hard jobs, sent out to talk to centaurs and dragons and giants and house elves. Surely he could at least contribute this.

So Remus Lupin stepped past the towering doors into the bank.

He dodged the crowds, mumbling 'excuse me' as he went, until he made it to a desk. "Can I help you?" the goblin said smarmily, looking Remus's threadbare clothes up and down. He'd managed to secure a job in the muggle world, but with no employment history nor any muggle papers it wasn't even minimum wage.

Sirius insisted on paying for the apartment. Remus only let him because otherwise, there wouldn't be anywhere for Harry to stay when he visited, what with Sirius being a little too quick on the wand nowadays.

"Sorry," he sneaked a peek at the nameplate, "Griphook, was it? I'm not here to open an account."

"Unless you have very good collateral, we won't lend money to you, either."

Remus forced a smile. "I believe we got off on the wrong foot." He lowered his voice. "How would you like the right to own a wand?"

Griphook's eyes narrowed. "You with the Aurors?"

Remus shook his head, inwardly cursing. This could be going better. "I'm with W.O.L.F.E." Griphook blinked. "Werewolves Of London For Equality. I know it's a bit clunky, and about seventy percent of our members don't even live in London, but I didn't have the heart to tell Juliet that when she was so set on the acronym."

His gaze turned calculating. "You're a werewolf. That explains a lot."

He nodded. "Our proposition is simple. You support our bid for equal rights in housing and non discrimination in jobs, and we support your bid for wands and…" He hesitated. Juliet hadn't said anything about it. He wasn't entirely certain the goblins even wanted it. "And perhaps having your children admitted to wizarding schools, should you so wish."

Griphook froze. Had Remus said the wrong thing? He cast about frantically for something else to say to fix things. W.O.L.F.E. couldn't afford the goblins as enemies, as one of the species with the most bargaining power in the wizarding world. "Of course, if that's not what you want-"

"I think," Griphook said levelly, "I should introduce you to our clan matriarch, who would be very interested in what you have to say."

* * *

Harry glanced up when his teammate, Eliza, stumbled into the common room to a chorus of angry whispers. They'd lost the game against Hufflepuff quite spectacularly when a bludger slammed Eliza into the quaffle hoops. Harry was the only one close enough to catch her, and despite what some of his more ardent teammates felt, catching a teammate was more important than catching the snitch.

Though nothing could best his accidental tackling of Hermione in the Ravenclaw match. He had a feeling no one would even bother to try out, next year.

Still, she grinned widely. "Guess what I've done!"

"Dropped the quaffle again?" Ginny muttered from by the fireplace. Ginny, as a first year, couldn't be on the quidditch team. Paradoxically, she thus took every pathetic Gryffindor defeat as a personal blow, because it decreased the likelihood there'd be a team for her to try out for next year. That still didn't excuse her for blaming Eliza for dropping the quaffle when she got knocked off her broom.

"That too," Eliza admitted, her smile never faltering. "But what I really wanted to say, is that I wrote to Oliver, and to this girl I know, Nadia, at Beauxbatons, and they said they could get their schools to agree to an interscholastic Quidditch League if we could get Hogwarts to!" She paused. "After I got through the who are yous with Oliver. My brother was his Head Boy back in the day, so Oliver has no excuses."

Harry blinked. "You really got the other schools to agree? Quidditch can continue?"

She flopped down in the seat besides Ginny, who glared at her pointedly to no avail. "No, I just made it up for you to ask questions."

Harry looked away, because otherwise the smile threatening to overwhelm his face would be revealed. "Oh. That's an awful shame, really. Too bad."

Ginny groaned. "Harry, we can't afford a sarcasm-off right now. You know you're going to lose, anyway." To Eliza, she said, "Hogwarts would have to field a team that wasn't garbage, first." Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were certainly better than the current Gryffindor mess- with the twins mourning and Oliver gone they could hardly do anything right- but not international Quidditch level. "And remember the Triwizard Tournament? We don't need the houses more divided."

"Hogwarts would field a team," Eliza repeated.

Harry sighed. "And Beauxbatons and Durmstrang would trounce us so badly we'd never do so again." He leaned back against the wall. "I know you're just trying to make us feel better."

She shook her head, looking vaguely disappointed in that way the twins did when a teacher accused them of blowing up a toilet. "Oh, Harry, Harry, don't be so small minded. Of course I don't envision myself on this team. I, quite frankly, am rubbish at Quidditch. This team would need to actually be good. And it could be, you know, if you don't let house lines divide it."

Oh. Yeah, the Slytherin keeper friend. Harry groaned under his breath, but not because of the suggestion. The DA was, after all, one of his fondest memories of the future. But Hogwarts houses only united when death was the only other option. He leveled his gaze at Ginny, who would be perfectly fine working alongside Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, but… "You don't mean that we should play alongside Slytherins, do you?"

"If a Slytherin happens to be a better player than another, it's what would make sense, no?"

Ginny shook her head. "But Slytherin supported the war."

Harry gritted the words between his teeth. "Ginny, tact."

"Not all Slytherins," Eliza said, and stood. "And I'm sure despite Peter Pettigrew being a Death Eater, you're not about to stop associating with your fellow Gryffindors. But I'm not likely to change your mind." She took the steps to the girls' tower two at a time.

Ginny waited for the sound of the door closing before turning to Harry. "Does she have a Slytherin boyfriend or something?"

He shook his head. "Her elder brother. Apparently he's well known back in their home country among the wizards for running an operation that secretly heals muggle war victims and works for peace."

Ginny blinked. "Doesn't that break the Statue of Secrecy?"

Harry shrugged. "Not if they use enough obliviates. She said it'd technically in a gray area of the law, but the authorities have too much else to deal with to worry about it."

"Huh. Bet he's still a sleazeball like Slughorn, though."

Harry coughed, a cough that sounded suspiciously like "McLaggen." Ginny chose to ignore that.

* * *

Luna was good at observing. She'd predicted, in the old world, that Morag and Sue were in love years before they said the words. She'd taken one look at Neville Longbottom and known he was just as important as Harry Potter, in his own way.

And she could see the wrackspurts. Hogwarts was full of them, in this world and the dream. Children often buried themselves in the dreams of their parents, and never stopped to consider there might be another way. She remembered Draco Malfoy in the dream of her fifth year, and the cloud of them that surrounded him. Too many for her to ever get through. Too many in most of the Death Eater children.

She pressed back against the window where she sat as Astoria Greengrass walked by. The girl glanced at her curiously, and a cloud of a hundred wrackspurts looked with her. Luna barely dared breathe.

She exhaled only when the girl had fully passed. Now, wasn't that curious? In the old world, Astoria had only the normal five or so. Now, she'd been taken over so fully Luna doubted even a bottle-cap necklace could help her. Greengrass wanted to avenge her sister, and Luna pitied anyone who got in her way, innocent or not.

Wrackspurts fed on… it was a nebulous array of emotions, a roiling mass of righteous anger, and desperate conviction that one had to be right despite all the niggling doubts. Astoria Greengrass was the former.

Percy was quickly slipping into the latter. The bottle cap necklace was working, but it could only do so much. He needed… She didn't know what he needed. Ultimately, defeating the wrackspurts came from inside. She couldn't save any of them, only serve as witness to their descent.

Sometimes they found their wings and caught themselves before they crashed and burned.

Sometimes, they didn't.

Someone settled into the window seat besides her. Luna turned. Penelope. "Hi?" Luna asked tentatively. The wrackspurts were about average for a close-minded person who wasn't involved with a cult, which is to say, more than Luna felt comfortable with, but it could be worse.

Penelope bit her lip. "How's your first year gone so far?"

Luna shrugged. "Less basilisks and people getting petrified than last time, more crumbling of basic society," she replied truthfully.

"Good, good," Penelope said, which was typical for people talking to Luna. She sometimes would have fun figuring out what she could get people to agree to when they weren't paying attention. "Prefectly duties, you know."

Luna didn't, and said so. Penelope ignored her. "I really came to say…" She swallowed, and Luna watched one of the wrackspurts in her cloud pop into purple smoke. "I'm sorry. I've been cruel, and shouldn't have tried to make you fit Ravenclaw ideals."

Luna blinked. "Percy didn't put you up to this, right?" she said, because she'd had people go to bat for her before, albeit only in the dream world, and while it was very sweet, she'd like to know who she could trust and who was just being nice to make someone else happy.

Penelope shrugged. "I don't blame you for thinking so little of me, but no. He's not even talking to me of late."  
"Do you want me to get him to talk to you again?" Luna asked, because, wrackspurt leaving or no, the idea that Penelope Clearwater sought her out just to apologize is ridiculous.

"No, I screwed that up. I'm not putting this on you. Just… you're looking after him? He has less of a support network than his brothers and sister." Luna nodded. "Good. You've never seen him at his happiest, you know. Ron this time around, and last time he was so focused on proving himself…" She shook her head. "And… Is someone looking after you?"

"What?"

"When I started in Ravenclaw…" Penelope shook her head. "I was never a Hermione Granger, grounded in the reality of the world. The more I understood magic, the more amazing and beautiful it all became." She was silent for a long minute. "You've reminded me… You're the sort who can be amazed by a simple cleaning spell, like the muggleborns are when they first arrive. I was that sort once, but Ravenclaw taught me what they thought was important, complexity and high marks and being known for your research. I'd forgotten how to let magic be magical. And I think Percy had, too, before you befriended him."

* * *

Arabella Zabini isolated the two of them at the end of the teacher's table that night. It wasn't as hard as she'd expected; Minerva, Pince, Flitwick, Bones, and Snape clustered at the other end, rather obsessively poring over some text or another, and Dumbledore and the remaining teachers only kept, say, ten percent of their attention in the real world on any given day.

Lockhart kept shooting nervous glances at her, but must have known the bad publicity he'd get for scurrying away from the woman whose son he failed to save, as he didn't flee. "Mrs. Zabini," he said, teeth frozen in an aching smile, "I do hope this day finds you well."

Arabella smirked. "The Judgement Bells are blooming," she replied.

"Is that so?" His disinterest was quite clear.

She sipped from her pumpkin juice. "They were Blaise's favorite flower." He swallowed. "Clear, delicate beauties, that ring day and night in the presence of the honorable." She smiled. "They always rang for him."

He raised a single, perfectly manicured eyebrow. "And the dishonorable?" Yes, she would call Gilderoy Lockhart many things, but never an idiot.

"Why, then they fall silent, and turn black with shadow. They do so for me, all but the hardiest, but then, I have never claimed to be anything but a scoundrel." She smiled ever so sweetly.

Evidently trying to placate her, he said, "And a finer woman for it, of course."

"Perhaps you should visit sometime. After all, Gilderoy Lockhart is the dictionary definition of honorable."

He blinked. "Actually, I'm quite the busy man, so I'm afraid I'll have to decline."

She tilted her head, sipping her wine with a small smile. "I've heard. You're taking on a rather lot, managing the Life Eternal, teaching, and that new club of yours."

"It needs to be done."

She leaned in, and whispered conspiratorially, "I worry, though. It's a motherly thing. I hear stories, about what you're teaching those children behind closed doors."

To his credit, Lockhart frowned innocently. "What I'm teaching them?"

Arabella shrugged. "I hear tell that you don't differentiate between Dark wizards and Death Eaters." She giggled. "Ridiculous, right? I'm Dark, and I doubt you believe I belong in Azkaban, let alone my son, were he alive today."

He flushed. "Of course not, dear. I never said we should send innocents to Azkaban, and you're innocent..." It was more a question than a statement.

Arabella kept her most guileless expression. "Of course I am," she said. "But then, what about the stories, about your Life Eternal attacking grieving families like the Davises?"

"I can't control what every single member does!" He realized a moment after he'd said it, the hole he dug.

Arabella gasped, pressed a hand to her open mouth. "I fear to return home this summer, then. Perhaps I shall have to put an ad in the papers for an Auror trained bodyguard to keep me safe."

Lockhart paled. "You won't have to do that. I was planning a speech for later this week denouncing the attacks. I want the populace to protect themselves, not to engage in vigilante justice."

"Oh." She smiled at him. "You _are_ a good man, Gilderoy, comforting me so."


	12. Up Against a Shark What Can a Herring Do

As always, do not own. I also do not own The Sound of Music, source for the chapter title.

There's only one more chapter after this one before this book is finished.

Reply to guest review: Thank you! As it so happens I did mean cousin, not sister, in my little error there- I can't imagine what my brain was doing.

I'm glad you like my version of Harry - Percy's changed enough and Arabella is basically an OC despite being technically canon, so I'm not as worried about screwing them up, but I worry my characterization of Harry isn't consistent enough.

As for the lack of attention, even if I look at my own skill generously, I was late to the fandom and am writing a rarely updated long fic- I'm thankful for the readers I do have! Also, you totally gave me the kick in the pants with that review I needed to finish editing this chapter.

* * *

Rita Skeeter and Gilderoy Lockhart were often underestimated by those around them. After all, it wasn't easy to become an unregistered animagus, drum up scandals about every important figure in the wizarding world, and avoid any retaliation. It wasn't easy to build a media empire on a winning smile and some Obliviates in the right places. It certainly wasn't easy to track down Harry Potter's Muggle relatives.

But they'd done it all. There were muggle records of a Harry Potter attending school in Little Whinging up until he'd received a full scholarship to "Huntingswode Preparatory School," Hogwarts' cover in the muggle world. Some muggle born or another in the Ministry had even made a school website, which was appropriately hard to navigate, with most of the easy to find pages proclaiming the school's innovation in educational excellence, cultivation of leaders, pushing of boundaries, and other essentially meaningless but impressive phrases, while it was impossible to find rather more important information like course lists, cost of attendance and just where the damn school was anyway. Lockhart approved.

Once they found Potter's primary school, it was easy to get his street address. Just a couple charms and obliviates in the right places, really.

They stood across from Number 4, Privet Drive, regarding the almost aggressively normal looking house. Or rather, Rita regarded while Lockhart tried to get her to understand his absolutely world-shattering problems. "-And then she said she'd be so thankful for my help, and that I was so kind for reassuring her! Now I have to denounce the Life Eternal's persecution of Dark individuals or everybody will know me as the man who made a grieving mother cry! She's going to ruin all our plans, Rita, and she won't even have to lift a finger." He paused thoughtfully. "She's rather clever, actually. If we could get her on our side…"

Rita raised an eyebrow. Not perfectly manicured, Lockhart thought. In fact, she looked rather scruffy after having been on the run for so long. "You did murder her son."

He threw up his hands. "Yes, but Zabini doesn't know that! At least, I think she doesn't. I'd probably have found poison in my drink by now if she had. That woman's Slytherin through and through."

"The Dark Lord upstairs says he's sure you'll figure it out. You want my advice? Dig up some dirt on the lady, beat her at her own game," Rita said. "Anyway, we need to focus on the matter at hand. Are you sure we want to do this today? What if we can catch Potter when he returns?"

Before he could answer, she paused, with that vacant look on her face that meant she was chatting with The Dark Lord. Lockhart found it creepy, to be honest. Rita smiled bitterly. "So no Dursleys means Potter is weak. I see. And it sends a powerful message to the wizarding world and causes them to fear him more." Turning to Lockhart, she added, "He says you know what you need to do."

Indeed he did. "There's a squib neighbor, a spy for Dumbledore. I'll take her down while you go after the Dursleys." The moment Rita turned away, he raised his wand. "Obliviate."

The Dark Lord hadn't been certain she could kill a child, so he wanted to do it himself.

Not-Rita stretched, popping their neck. "Thank you, Gilderoy. I do appreciate having a body, and I can have some fun with this." They smiled, and Gilderoy's gut churned, because Rita never smiled like that, like she was considering ripping his throat out with her teeth. "Do take care of that old squib next door, though." And that tone, that way they spat the word squib like it were rancid meat… This could be Rita's eviler twin sister.

Gilderoy gulped, but strode down the walk of the next door house, an unassuming suburban building with the most horrid curtains with pictures of grotesquely cute kittens. He paused, on the stoop, and looked back towards the Dark Lord.

The Not-Rita pointed their wand at the Dursley home. "Confringo." And Number 4 Privet Drive erupted into flames.

Not-Rita cast a charm on themself that would protect them from the flames. They walked into the Dursleys' home.

Gilderoy knocked politely on the neighbor's door, once, twice, then waited for a response. The door creaked open ever so slowly to reveal an elderly woman, eyes blinking from recent sleep. She wore a long floral nightie and fluffy pink slippers, and a scarred orange tabby wove about her ankles, giving Lockhart the baleful glare its owner couldn't muster up. Shit, she looked like his grandmother. New plan. "What-"

Gilderoy flashed his brightest smile. "Good evening, ma'am! Would you like to find God?"

She blinked. "At this hour?"

He nodded, trying to stay perfectly serious. "No hour is too late to take the Lord into your heart, ma'am."

She frowned, craning her neck to see past him. "Is that fire next door?"

"Not at all, ma'am, not at all." Gilderoy Lockhart pretended he couldn't hear the screaming next door. "Everything is perfectly fine."

Her gaze traveled past him, to the skies above. "That's the Dark Mark," she squeaked.

"Shit," Gilderoy said eloquently, as only he could. He pointed his wand at the elderly woman and said, "Obliviate, Obliviate, Obliviate."

She collapsed into his arms. See, he'd learned an important lesson in the dream world about obliviation. Enough of it could absolutely destroy a mind. Already, he could see the signs that Rita was slipping from his occasional but chronic use of it on her, and he'd just hit the elderly woman with it three times in rapid succession. He couldn't kill her, not when she reminded him ever so strongly of his own grandmother, but he was perfectly willing to push her along the road to senility a little.

Once, Rita had told him he had the strangest moral compass. Frankly, he didn't see what she meant.

He carried the woman to the couch in her living room, swatting a cat off it and getting scratched for his troubles. He considered. Should he stay for her to wake, to be all heroic and put out the fire though unfortunately it was too late to save the Dursleys?

No. Gilderoy couldn't afford to, not after having obliviated her. There were almost no people alive who would recognize the connection, and perhaps the healers wouldn't even realize she'd been obliviated, but Potter and his friends knew his secret. He couldn't afford to give them any evidence to support their hazy dream memories.

But he could send the Life Eternal here after he and Not-Rita vacated the area. Anonymous tip, he could say.

* * *

Tonks was not having a good day. Good days were few and far between of late, especially given she sent Remus another letter last week and he still had yet to reply to any of them, but today was especially bad, even though it was only seven A.M.

No, today she stood in Flourish and Blotts and wondered when the world had fractured into an insensible, broken mess, or if perhaps it'd always been that way and she was just too stupid to notice. "You cast the Reductor Curse at a boy for shoplifting," she said tersely, still trying to wrap her mind about it.

Said boy had already been rushed to St. Mungos by a helpful passerby to have his arm regrown. Not the bones; she'd seen bones regrown during that one month she thought she might possibly want to be a healer. The entire arm. Tonks concentrated on not paying attention to the blood and scattered chunks of vaguely recognizable flesh in a puddle to her right. It was hard.

So she didn't entirely blame herself when her voice shook a little as she said, "What in all the hells were you thinking?"

The woman pushed her glasses up her nose. "He was Dark, and committing a crime." She near spat the word Dark.

"The punishment for shoplifting isn't death, or even maiming," Tonks growled. "And what made you think he was Dark, which last I checked wasn't a crime, either?"

"The book he was stealing was about the killing curse," the witch said, stiffly.

Tonks turned to the bloody scene on the other side of the room, squinted at the book lying in the center of it through the magical barrier she'd put up to prevent crime scene contamination. Blood stained the pages of the book from a creamy white to a deep rust, but the cover was still legible. "From Abrakadabra to Avada Kedavra: How the Euthanasia Spell Became the Killing Curse," she read aloud.

"See?" the woman said. "It's a Dark book."

Tonks wondered how much paperwork she'd have to do if she stunned the witch. Probably a lot. The first rule the Auror administrative staff told her when she arrived for her first day was that "Just because Moody can get away with it doesn't mean you can." When she asked what 'it' was, the wizard at the front desk just said, "You'll know when the time comes."

She had a feeling this instance qualified as an 'it', and so kept her hand off her wand. "It's a history book. My boyfriend in sixth year wanted to create new spells when he graduated. So his teachers assigned it as an object lesson in what happens if you change spells without fully understanding the consequences, in this case from a spell for mercy killings where you could only use it if you were truly saddened by the need to do so into a murder weapon fueled by hate. It's about as far from dark as you can get without casting Lumos!"

"He had a wand."

"So do you!"

The look on the witch's face was just… So back in the dream world, when Tonks fought the Death Eaters, there were three types of enemies. Some had that trapped look, like mice running from a cat, where Tonks was almost certain that even if they'd joined up of their own free will at first, the only reason they didn't defect was fear, whether for themselves or for another. Then there were the sort that were just mad, mad in both meanings of the word, lashing out hedonists who placed no value judgement on their following You-Know-Who, fighting because he wasn't going to tell them not to torture and kill.

But the ones Tonks always hated the most were the righteous, the ones who thought they were moral, the ones who smirked and said, "You know, dear, I can't understand how you could possibly be so misguided." She could almost understand the first two. The last…

The elderly witch smiling smugly before her was reminding her an awful lot of that last group. "But it's different," the woman said.

And something in Tonks snapped. "Yeah, I suppose so," she said, voice all full of false bubbles and cheer.

"I'm glad you understand-"

"After all, he had his wand holstered by his side when he made the absolutely unforgivable crime of trying to leave with a book without paying for it, while you both ruined said book and decided to take justice into your own hands by permanently maiming the boy," (Healers could only do so much. While the boy would probably get an arm back, whether the hand at the end of it wound up with fingers was another question entirely.) "Which, if stealing property is worth losing an arm, well, destroying said property should be worth at least the same." The woman paled, and took a step back. "Not to mention whatever punishment there is for permanently disabling a child, intentionally, no less. Tell me, how does life in Azkaban sound to you?"

She glared. "You can't do this! I'm a member of the Life Eternal!"

"Course you are," Tonks muttered. Sometimes it seemed they were arresting a Life Eternal member every week. Lockhart's lawyers kept getting them off with fines, but she figured there was no way they could spin this one to look like a misunderstanding. Which reminded her, "You're under arrest." Or at least she would be once Moody got here. Tonks didn't actually have the authority to arrest anyone yet, but it was assumed she'd just have to stand around and look intimidating since she'd be patrolling the best sector of Diagon Alley, and the important folks were dealing with yet another riot in Knockturn Alley.

One of said important folks apparated into the room, scattering the books even further. "We need to go to Little Whinging," Moody snapped.

Tonks blinked. "But...she… that…" she said ineffectually, gesturing first at the woman, then the slowly drying blood.

"Petrificus Totalus," he said, and the woman dropped to the floor in a total body-bind. "We can send somebody to bring her in who hasn't seen Potter's relative's house. You're fetching Arthur Weasley, too, to identify the relatives, since the man's damn near invisible compared to Rubeus Hagrid."

Tonks processed this, said, "Shit," and Disapparated.

* * *

They met again by chance, if by chance one could call it, when two people were trying so hard to avoid one another they evaded right into each other. But meet they did, despite their best efforts to the contrary, and now they had to say something to one another.

"Penelope," he said, but then was lost, twiddling his fingers as he tried to think of what exactly to say to her.

"Percy," she replied. "How… how is spring treating you?" She closed her eyes, apparently as aghast at the inanity of the question as he was at his own inability to find words. What a pair.

"Warm," he said. Finding this answer inadequate, he added, "And rainy."

Her lips quirked up into a smile. "Spring is like that," she agreed, mock solemnly.

Despite himself, Percy smiled back. "I ran into Luna again, and she said, and here I quote, that you killed some of your wrackspurts, though you were still dreadfully prone to the things." His gaze dropped to her neck, to the bottle-cap and dried radish necklace adorning it. "I see she got to you too. We'd better keep an eye out, or that girl will start a new religion."

Penelope laughed. "With the Quibbler as their bible? In all seriousness, Percy, I'd forgotten some very important things, and she reminded me why I always wanted to be a witch in the first place. And she helped you, too."

"I didn't need help."

She smiled, indulgently. "Of course you didn't. Still, it's pleasant sometimes, to have things you don't need."

When had they moved so close together, instead of their earlier awkward distance? He could feel the warmth of her breath on his face, smell her coconut shampoo. She leaned in and kissed him. Penelope's kiss was sweet familiarity, memories of poring over dusty books in the library, of chasing each other laughing in the meadows, of their little jokes and bets no one else understood.

He'd missed it.

He pulled away pointedly anyway, and just... she looked as conflicted as he felt, worrying her top lip between her teeth. Just because if he was going to destroy her heart this way, he might as well completely grind it underfoot, he asked, "So, how's Oliver's Quidditch season going?"

"I… I have to go write him." And she left.

Fled, more like.

He stayed there, leaning against the wall, for a good five minutes before he could remember where he'd been going or what he was supposed to be doing.

* * *

Neville twisted the wrapper in his pocket between his fingers for confidence as he approached the imposing wooden door, marked with a simple plaque. Professor Arabella Zabini; Herbology.

He knocked. "Come in."

He'd never been in Professor Zabini's office before, at least not when it was her office and not Professor Sprout's, so he took advantage of the chance to look around. The walls were lined with shelves of books, the windowsill filled with seedlings. "Just muggle herbs," Professor Zabini said dismissively, "But I find they give the room a pleasant aroma. Don't trod on Hubert."

Neville froze, and dropped his gaze to the snuffling black niffler two inches from his feet. The niffler blinked at him, then rolled on its back, hugging to its chest what looked suspiciously like a miniature disco ball. "If you have buttons on any of your clothes, don't let him see them," Professor Zabini added. "He's awfully partial to buttons."

He carefully stepped around Hubert, who didn't appear to have a care in the world, and seated himself in the chair opposite Professor Zabini, after furtively checking it for yet more surprises. "Most people don't keep nifflers as pets."

She smiled slightly. "His mother was killed by a bear. I felt we had a connection, and give him a shiny toy to play with and he's no trouble at all. You should see him with tinsel." Her eyes narrowed, and Neville remembered this woman was mother to a Slytherin, and likely one herself. "But I digress. Please, Mr. Longbottom, tell me what you need. I suspect, given your talents, it's not Herbology help."

He fidgeted, though Grandmother always chastised him when he did. "Actually, I did come to ask about Herbology, in a way." He swallowed, but forged on. If he'd managed to ask Professor Snape his first year, the first time around before his new confidence, he could ask a woman who kept a niffler as a pet and named it Hubert. "Do you know of any plants that clear the mind, that treat, well, not just forgetfulness, because a forgetfulness potion treats forgetting little things, like where you put your keys, but long term memory loss and…?" He trailed off. "Sorry for bothering you."

Professor Zabini frowned, but more in thought than displeasure. "Not a forgetfulness potion. Then you're not asking this to study for exams?"

Neville flinched. "No, of course not. My Gran would kill me, if I didn't die from shame first."

She leaned forward, though Neville noted she didn't do so much as put her elbows on the desk, like a normal person would. Overly mannered pureblood, then, like he'd expected. He half expected her to snap at him to sit up straighter like Gran always did. "Then, if I may, why do you ask?"

Well, at least she hadn't insulted him yet. Professor Snape had already called him an imbecile three times by this stage, though at least he'd let off the tiniest bit for the rest of the meeting after Neville explained. "When I was very young, while the war was still on, Death Eaters…" he faltered. "My parents… they used the Cruciatus Curse on them. By the time help came… My parents have been in St. Mungo's spell damage ward ever since I was a year old. Sometimes they don't even remember me or Gran. Gran or I," he hastens to correct himself.

"I see." She was silent for a long moment, long enough that Neville grew uneasy and wondered if he should leave, long enough that Hubert grew bored with his disco ball and started chewing on the plastic ends of Neville's shoelaces. Neville cautiously moved his feet away from the niffler, who gazed up at him in the saddest expression he'd seen since he last refused offered food from a house elf. "Rosemary," she finally said.

"What?"

She met his gaze. "Rosemary is good for the memory. It's primarily used by muggles, so the healers may not have tried it. Azaleas and rhododendrons, gingko, perhaps calmus roots, though they'd need to neutralize the poison first. Fairy wings." She sighed at the look on Neville's face. "It's a plant, boy. I'm not advocating plucking the wings off fairies."

"Oh." That seemed kind of obvious now that she said it. "Thank you, Professor Zabini."

She shook her head. "Don't get your hopes up. They've quite possibly tried them all already." She hesitated. "Perhaps you should also talk to a muggleborn you trust. Muggle medicine and care is very different from magic, but I'm sure they have insanity there too, and…. Don't tell anyone I said this, but they are better at some things. Though the Prophet's Ferret-Pest article about Sirius Black leads me to believe either the reporter or the muggles are idiots."

That startled a laugh from Neville. "But isn't it likely they have muggleborn healers? They should have thought of anything muggle methods could do, right?"

Professor Zabini sighed. "Mr. Longbottom. How terribly naive of you. Have you ever tried getting a witch or wizard to accept a non-magical solution for a problem? Thinking with their wands, the whole lot."

"You just pointed out a non-magical solution for a problem, though."

She raised one eyebrow a fraction of an inch. "Ah, but Mr. Longbottom, I am not the usual witch, as no doubt an astute herbologist like you figured out when I walked into the Great Hall with a Frozen Blood Rose in my hair."

"I'd been meaning to ask how you grew it," Neville admitted. "I've never seen one outside of textbooks. I don't think even the greenhouses have one."

She beamed. "Well, I had to get the seeds from this witch in Argentina living on a glacier…"

* * *

"What?"

Remus and Sirius, who'd come up to the castle to deliver him the news at Professor McGonagall's request- "I think he needs someone he cares for to tell him, even though they were the worst kind of muggles."- regarded Harry compassionately, but neither said a word, and that, more than anything else, convinced him it was true.

He sank back in his chair, thoughts whirling. The Dursleys had never been kind to him, but the home they'd given him had kept him alive, and that meant something to him. "How did they die?" he whispered.

His guardians, for who else would Dumbledore hand him over to but his godfather and (unofficially because of the whole werewolf thing) Remus, exchanged a loaded glance. Remus said, "Fire. They found the Dark Mark at the site."

Harry swallowed, remembering Halloween and the funeral pyres of his fellow children. He clenched his fists, remembering another world's Vincent Crabbe and Fiendfyre ravaging the Room of Requirement. They'd never been kind to him, no, but… "No one deserves that kind of death." At least the Killing Curse was supposed to be painless. "Mrs. Figgs? What happened to her? She was the next door neighbor, this squib keeping an eye on me, but she was always nice."

"St. Mungo's," Sirius told him. "They're not entirely sure what happened to her. They found her unconscious on her couch, but whoever did it just left her alone and even locked the door behind them." He hesitated. "She woke up a couple hours ago, from what McGonagall told us before you got here. Couldn't even remember her own name, let alone anything about what happened last night, though she was apparently very worried about her cats."

Harry was many things, but however he might act on occasion, he was by no means stupid. "This was meant to remove my mother's protection on me, wasn't it?" he said.

"It looks like it," Remus confirmed.


	13. Not a Bit Reprehensible, so Defensible

He found her on the stands at the Quidditch pitch, watching the setting sun. It painted the world in warm pinks and oranges, and sharpened the shadows of the Forbidden Forest and the grasses of the pitch. He joined her, but didn't say a word, and wasn't entirely certain she even noticed he was there, until she said, "Next year, there's to be Quidditch between the schools. A sort of Triwizard tournament, but less dangerous and with more participants. Probably more entertaining, too. What in the world were they thinking with the lake and the maze, where we couldn't even see what was happening?" Percy opened his mouth to answer (it had seemed like a good idea at the time, and Mr. Crouch was adamant) but she just continued without a pause. "Inter-house, even. The more athletically inclined Ravenclaws were discussing it this morning."

His throat tightened. "Will Oliver be participating?"

"Almost certainly, since it'd give him more chances to visit." She glanced at him sideways through the curtain of her hair. "I told him."

"About Quidditch?" he asked.

She snorted. "You're not stupid, Percy, so don't pretend." She paused. "I didn't tell you it was you, though."

"Why not?"

Penelope bit her lip. "It wasn't your fault. I wanted-" She sighed. "I don't know what I wanted. I don't know what I want, even now. And here I am, after you've lost everything you have, complaining about this, this trivial little blip!"

Percy smiled, ever so slightly. "This trivial little blip is the most normal thing I've experienced in the past couple years," he said. "It's kind of nice." He watched a caterpillar crawl along the railing of the stand, and lifted his hands to clear its path. "Why did you kiss me, anyway?" _Not that it wasn't nice._

"I'm not entirely sure."

He waited, to see if she would say anything else, and when she didn't, replied, "I didn't exactly try to stop you. I should have. Oliver was my friend." Is. It should have been is, but he couldn't bring himself to draw attention to his slip-up.

"I don't blame you," she said. "Remember when we broke up?"

He raised an eyebrow. "When I chucked my prefect badge at your feet? Rather rude of me."

She shook her head. "No. In the old world. When you were a year into your time at the Ministry, and still shaken over the Triwizard Tournament."

"Diggory was- is a good kid." He swallowed. "I guess only the idiot who didn't notice his pet rat was a Death Eater would also not notice his boss going insane."

She gave him a sideways glance. "There were, what, three Death Eaters in a solid six years teaching at Hogwarts without Professor Dumbledore noticing?"

He forced a smile. "I didn't say I was the only idiot in the wizarding world."

"Then we're in trouble, for I wonder how any of us are even smart enough to tie our shoes." She stared out over the darkening field. "Do you ever wish we could go back to when it all made sense?"

The caterpillar had passed, and he leaned on the railing once more. "No. We already screwed up our second chance. Who's to say we wouldn't do even worse with a third?"

* * *

Tonks, as a young, non-threatening Auror with Death Eater relatives, led the way through the Floo, Moody following close behind her.

"Mrs. Crabbe," she said to the woman knitting a horridly lumpy green scarf in the rocking chair by the fire. She looked up, and Tonks pretended she didn't see the reddened eyes. "We're here to protect you on your way to the trial."

The woman carefully set her knitting down in a basket by her chair, and rose. "Lead the way," she said. There was no feeling in it, no inflection, no nothing.

Tonks stepped back into the fire, but before she called out the Ministry's name, she turned to Mrs. Crabbe. "You are aware that they have requested that you take veritaserum?"

It hadn't been asked of any of the aurors involved in the event, not even Gwendolynn Nott, the woman who'd struck the killing blow.

Mrs. Crabbe closed her eyes for a moment, the only expression of emotion she'd allow. "It doesn't surprise me in the least."

And so they stepped through the flames into the Ministry, where the protesters waited. They'd only been officially allowed in as far as the lobby, but… most of the Aurors weren't being as cooperative in this manner as Tonks and Moody.

The screaming and shouting and insults enveloped them, as Moody and Tonks flanked Mrs. Crabbe on the way to the elevator, clearing the way with simple comments of, "Move aside, or you'll be charged with obstructing the peace," or in Moody's case, "Move, idiots, or I'll give you something real to complain about!" No one struck a blow or pulled a wand, and Tonks had to hope that if they had tried, the other Aurors would have interceded.

Still, the words were weapons of their own.

"Traitor!"

"Death eater scum!"

"Hussy!"

Admittedly, not all of the insults made sense, but that was rather typical of angry mobs. Tonks was rather glad when the elevator doors swung shut behind them. "Are you alright?" she asked Mrs. Crabbe.

"'Course not," she said. "But I'll face worse in the courtroom."

"It's a closed trial," Tonks argued.

Mrs. Crabbe shrugged. "Just means they'll be more polite about it."

She was to sit in the middle of that ridiculous courtroom, the center of the circle of wizards judging her every thought. Tonks didn't envy her in the least. She was allowed to stay, as crowd control.

Moody was staying, too, but he'd be testifying as to Gwendolyn Nott's character. Tonks didn't know if he'd been called by the prosecution or the defense. She didn't dare ask, either.

But first, Gwendolynn Nott, the woman who'd cast the killing spell, took the seat. The middle-aged auror smiled slightly at the judge, almost grandmotherly. That, more than anything, made Tonks hate her.

And so the questions began.

"Ms. Gwendolynn Nott. Can you describe to us the events of July 25, 1991?"

"That was the night I, Lester Higgins, and Gerald York arrested Matthew Crabbe, due to his Death Eater affiliation and future crimes," she said softly. "He fought back, using, among others, _stupify, incendio,_ the cruciatus curse, and the killing curse."

"He had killing intent, then?"

"I believe so. We needed to defend ourselves, and so I aimed a bone-breaker curse at Matthew's wand arm to disarm him. Unfortunately, he dodged, and the child had entered the room in the meantime. The curse hit him in the neck. Of course we got him medical attention as quickly as possibly, but by that point it was already too late."

"There was no sign the child was in the room until the curse was already said?"

"None. I of course regret what happened, quite deeply."

Tonks bit her lip to keep from saying all of the comments that flitted through her mind, like why didn't she report it, then, and why the heck was she using potentially lethal spells in a room with a noncombatant (Mrs. Crabbe) when _Stupify_ and _Expelliarmus_ existed, anyway?

"Ms. Nott, did you fight against Death Eaters in the first Wizarding War?"

"Yes," she said. "Including drawing arms against my own brother, who chose to support You-Know-Who."

"What are your feelings on civilian casualties in war?"

Tonks dropped her head into her hands. For one blessed moment, she'd forgotten how much of a farce the Wizarding Court system was.

* * *

The last street of Knockturn Alley hid a stone house, a squat little house crouched predatorially besides the lane, posed to spring on unwary travelers. Were one to step inside the maw, one would find dusty statues casting shadows, both of which moved when one looked away, and only then. If one avoided the elderly shopkeeper and tickled the nose of the marble hippogriff until it sneezed three times, a spiral staircase appeared, leading one down into the dark. The basement at the bottom was lit with candles, and contained as odd a group of fellows as one ever did see.

One of said fellows was Remus Lupin, who was pondering. What they were doing was not technically illegal, of course. Citizens of the wizarding world were allowed to gather of their own free will in any groupings they so chose, assuming they weren't past Death Eaters, anyway.

Still, he suspected were an Auror to see the gathering of werewolves and goblins, giants and centaurs (they hadn't gone down the stairs- they had their own methods of strange travel), vampires and the one boggart who was taking great effort to remain undifferentiated in a white mist, least they be forced to wear a stuffed vulture hat and carry a sequined handbag, along with creatures Remus didn't even recognize, said Auror would run with their tail between their legs right back to the Ministry and gatherings of not quite humans would be outlawed before one could say " _Silencio."_

He hoped it didn't come to that. This wasn't the sort of lot that would walk away quietly and go back to their everyday lives.

Juliet Weasley stood, at the opposite side of the round table- an insistence of Remus's, for everyone who sat at a round table was equal- and said, "Welcome, all, to the Society of Undervalued Lives." She smiled. "And yes, that is SOULs for short. Sometimes the wizards forget we have them, after all." She cleared her throat. "Anyway, some of you know me, and some of you don't. My name is Juliet Weasley, and I am a werewolf, founder of W.O.L.F.E., the sub-organization of SOULs working for werewolf equality. We're not as oppressed as some of you," she admitted, "But I cannot find a job in the Wizarding World, and as a poor pureblood, am unqualified for a job in the muggle world."

"Like a squib," Remus muttered, wondering if there were any there that night. Squibs from half-blood families were still connected enough to their muggle heritage to attend muggle schools easily enough. Squibs from rich pureblood families either were supported in muggle education, the McDougall route, or they suffered an unfortunate 'accident.' But squibs in pureblood families without money, well… they were the Argus Filches and Arabella Figgs of the worlds, dependent on charity and menial labor to survive.

She shot a sharp glance at him. "Yes," she said. "Exactly like a squib. And here is Remus Lupin, the last werewolf to attend Hogwarts."

He swallowed, but stood anyway, all eyes on him. "I was lucky enough to have enough Muggle education to make my way," he said, aware of how pathetic he sounded, "and to have a great man take pity on me to allow me into Hogwarts, but…" He faltered, though he'd been determined to say it. "My friends at Hogwarts, were as stupid and naive as any other set of teenagers. That does not excuse the prank one attempted to play where essentially…" He'd never admitted how incredibly boneheaded of a thing Sirius had done. "He tricked a bully into walking into my place of change, and were it not for sheer luck and another good friend, I would have killed him. I would have killed him and been sent to Azkaban and been ridden with guilt for the rest of my life because a friend thought it'd be funny to scare a bully a little. As it was, he revealed my secret." Remus ducked his head. "Thank you," he added softly.

"Who speaks for the giants?" he heard Julia calling, even as he settled back into his seat, shaking.

It would begin in July, the first counterattack of what, for decades, had been a one way war.

* * *

"Gilderoy Lockhart Chasing Minister's Job"

By Marcus Weasley

Can celebrities make good politicians? Gilderoy Lockhart seems to think so, as he's called for a vote of no confidence in Cornelius Fudge, stating, "I could do a better job than him!"

Protesters agreed, proudly displaying signs calling for Fudge's downfall. Reasons were varied.

One young woman said she was against Fudge because "He arrested kids, you dolt, for what they would become! There are very good reasons why we don't take a time turner back to kill You-Know-Who while he was still a boy."

This reporter would like to assert he is by no means a dolt and to note Lockhart has announced publicly both his desire to give the Slytherin children a second chance and to free the house elves, another key protester issue.

Other arguments were quite baffling, such as that of the elderly man who argued with me for hours, saying Fudge was "too brown and sweet for his tastes." When I pointed out Fudge was actually rather pasty, he retorted, "Maybe your Fudge."

(Next week- The shattering expose of Fudge's secret black gay alternate identity.)

The minister refused to comment.


End file.
